It was the tie the authorities didn't want. When those names came out of the hat, the first reaction - which dared not speak its name - was "potential bloodbath" (God, what about our World Cup bid?). The second would have been "political ramifications damaging to the Union". Scotland v England has always been much more than just a football match, particularly north of the border. In fact, probably the least interesting thing about this contest is the actual game itself, between an average England side and a poor Scottish one.
For the Scots, a lot of suppressed nationalism was traditionally vented in football. I don't think it's pure coincidence that since the traditional end-of-season match between the two teams was dropped 10 years ago, the Scottish National Party has grown exponentially as a political force, while the unionist party (Conservative) has declined. Scotland now has a more real, mature and political nationalism. Where this leaves the traditional Scottish emotion surrounding this fixture remains to be seen.
When the draw was made, a lot of friends in London were asking me if I thought that it would "go off" between the rival "hooligan" mobs of the countries. I didn't think it would. No self-respecting Scottish hooligan would open the curtains to watch the national team play, whereas any England thug worth his salt will want to be there.
The strange thing is that this is a complete reversal of the situation in the 70s. Then the Scotland v England fixture was the one occasion that united the more aggressive factions of the Rangers and Celtic support, who would cast aside their differences for one day every two years to run riot through the streets of London. Back then, no English hooligan took much interest in the fixture. It was considered a bit strange in those days to support the England national team, the preserve of specky anorak types.
Chelsea and West Ham changed all that when their boys took to following England away, making up the bulk of the travelling support. Both teams were in the doldrums throughout the 80s, and thus the national team provided a focus for them - and an opportunity to export hooliganism to Europe.
In Scotland, the reverse has been the case. Football's violence has all but vanished from the culture of the Scottish national support, which has traditionally been Glasgow dominated. Most football-minded Scots outside Glasgow are alienated by the bias of the footballing authorities and the Scottish media towards Rangers and Celtic. This bias manifests itself everywhere, in terms of which players get selected for the national team, how much coverage the Glasgow clubs receive in the media, right down to the location of the national stadium.
While national attention was firmly focused on Glasgow, the irony was that Rangers and Celtic fans were taking less interest in the Scottish national team than ever. The main reason for that was that the Scottish side had declined drastically in a world context. The skilled, glorious failures of yesteryear were at least contenders; the dour minnows that replaced them make 90 minutes browsing through an Argos catalogue seem appealing. But the Old Firm disaffection was magnified by a peculiar manifestation of Scottish bigotry. Through the 70s and 80s the Troubles in Northern Ireland were receiving more and more attention. This brought about the institutionalisation and ritualisation of the traditional bigotry of the Glasgow supporter, who has always taken an unhealthy interest in such things. The bigot had an opportunity to disguise daft prejudices as some sort of principled political stance. So for Celtic fans, the logical conclusion to being a "true Tim" was to follow not Scotland, but the Republic of Ireland.
Also at this time, Republic of Ireland internationals such as Pat Bonner, Chris Morris, Mick McCarthy and Tony Cascarino were playing for Celtic. The cultural and commercial rise of the replica strip welded the connection. Television cameras began to capture a visible Celtic presence at Ireland games.
Rangers Billy-boy bigots had more of a problem. They couldn't really appropriate "Scotland" as a concept that excluded Catholics as they had been able to do in the past. Being "pro-Scotland" in the changing political climate of 80s English Tory rule was increasingly perceived as a pro-nationalist stance. And it's hard to be a nationalist in Scotland and a unionist in Northern Ireland.
Also, when Graeme Souness was appointed manager in 1986 and brought with him a clutch of top English players, Rangers became more of a United Kingdom concern than ever. So while Celtic fans flew the Irish tricolour and supported the Republic, Rangers fans waved the Union Jack and thought of the teddy bears embodying Scotland as the Protestant bastion of unionist Britain.
Meanwhile, the "Tartan army", the followers of the Scotland national team, became more middle-class than ever largely due to the Scottish Football Association's control of tickets which were sold through its travel club. Whenever tickets are strictly controlled and tied to travel packages (and so made more expensive) you invariably get the replacement of traditional working-class supporters by the nouveau riche.
Many followers of the Scotland team now are not so much football supporters as professional celebrators. If they do go regularly to club matches, they tend to follow the smaller clubs or junior football. The atmosphere is boisterous but friendly, with fans over anxious to behave well in order to show their alleged differences from the "hooligan" English. Even given the hateful atmosphere of this fixture, it's difficult to envisage serious numbers of Hibernian, Aberdeen, Rangers or Motherwell "hooligans" fighting side by side against anyone. The smaller number of clubs with significant mobs in Scotland and the fact that the Scottish Premier League teams meet each other four times a year makes the participants more easily identifiable, the aggro more personal and forced unity for an international fixture a lot harder to achieve. It also makes the whole scene easier to police and the Scottish forces have been far more successful than their English counterparts in controlling what is still strangely referred to as "football hooliganism".
This doesn't mean that there won't be trouble; far from it. You can be sure that there will be an England mob "up for it", mostly without tickets, at both Hampden and Wembley. There will also be numerous instances of isolated violence against both English and Scots supporters before, after and during both games. There will be a massive police presence and the matches will be played in an atmosphere of poisonous hate, which will carry on for at least a week, in public houses all over the disunited kingdom. It'll make us remember why we let the fixture lapse in the first place.
These are interesting times for our islands. Scotland is taking its faltering steps towards growing up. But it's done this by dumping the constitutional burden - and the democratic deficit - on to England. The potential for animosity is probably just as great as ever.
The big challenge now for England is to carve out its own post-imperial identity, The task for Scotland is to keep growing up and do it quickly - the game against England shouldn't mean as much to us as it does. And it still does, however we try to talk it down.
On the day of either match I know that simply because of their accents, I won't be able to bring myself to be around some of my closest friends. I wouldn't trust myself and I probably wouldn't trust some of them either. And that makes me feel sad. The problem with occasions like this is that they tell us things about ourselves that we'd sometimes rather not know. To that end, I think the biggest test will lie with the media on both sides of the border. Extreme sensitivity will be needed - certainly a lot more than I've seen in some Scottish tabloids of late.
