Young Sportswriter of the Year: Runner-up 2

We are delighted to say that we got over 30 entries from universities across Scotland for this competition. Thanks are due to News UK Scotland, the publishers of The Times and Sunday Times Scotland and The Scottish Sun, for their support and encouragement. It's always good to see aspiring young journalists coming through the ranks and there were five entries we deemed good enough to be published here on our website. We'll publish the four runners-up first, followed by the winner. Here's the second runner-up, Tony Quilietti-Tawse, from Edinburgh Napier University.

The Myth of Scottish Football Folly

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus of Ephyra was condemned by Zeus to roll a boulder up a hill only for it to tumble back down for all eternity. For Scotland, the last 28 years have been that same saga of punishment. Qualification campaigns from 1998 have all began with a new hope, gathering momentum through stubborn – but dour - belief, and ending in despair. This has been a nation watching as its national squad suffers through the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune. Now, at long last, it’s time to escape the footballing underworld.

Scotland’s national squad exists as a paradox. True appreciation of any success can never be separated from an understanding of the deprivation and great failure that has come before.  As a nation, joy is rationed. It must be earned through decades of misses, draws, and cruel defeats. Over nearly three decades, both the team and the country have been shaped by absence—absence from tournaments, from relevance and ultimately from the global conversation. Undoubtedly, supporting Scotland has been about endurance.

Whether Steve Clarke’s squad is “good enough” for the job this time around seems irrelevant. Scotland has never thrived on certainty. Bookies place the odds of lifting the Fifa World cup at a laughable 250/1, but it is precisely this lack of faith—that fuels the country. Scotland functions best when written off - Remember - Denmark seemed insurmountable until the 4-2 trouncing at Hampden Park on the 18^th of November!  This team is, in essence, a golden turd in a sea of stunners: unglamorous and faintly ridiculous, but the messier the miracle, the greater the myth. Scotland dares to dream because dreaming has always been an act of rebellion in a place where who dares wins.

The wounds of time are well remembered. Scotland’s last appearance at a World Cup came in 1998. Brazil shattered the Tartan Army 2–1 in a match that flirted with dignity before reality reasserted itself. Morocco then delivered a crushing 3–0 defeat that closed the book—not just on the tournament, but on an era. Now, 28 years without return and 13 managers sacrificed at the altar of inadequacy later, we arrive at a moment that feels dangerously like destiny.

Boston and Miami are the battlegrounds. This is Steve Clarke’s mythic uprising—a footballing Bildungsroman in which the nation’s character is forged not through dominance, but through survival. Every tackle, every set piece, every scrappy goal will be weighted by history. Success here would not be measured in goals, but in spectacle, a final reckoning of relief to the historic tsunami of floundering that has haunted us.

To support Scotland is to accept that success will arrive not as inevitability, but as a rupture—something torn from the jaws of expectation. This is not a golden generation. It is not beautiful football. It is belief, battered and stubborn, dragging itself uphill once more. And if the boulder rolls back again, we will push it again anyway.