If qualifying for World Cups was easy, we would do it every four years

SAYS ANDY ROBERTSON

- 

ON a night when Steve Clarke put the Scotland dressing room on blast, there was another talismanic presence seeking his own answers.

The manager exploded at halftime during the abject 2-1 victory over Belarus on Sunday, the most frustrated he'd been in his record-breaking 72 games in charge, with Che Adams admitting he'd never seen his gaffer so perturbed.

Clarke conceded his mood may shift after a quiet beer back at base camp and Scotland know a draw in Athens and a victory against Denmark will send them to their first World Cup in 28 years.

And while the boss was seething, Scotland's captain Andy Robertson was posing his own leading questions to only reinforce the magnitude of the achievement the national team stands 180 minutes away from securing.

The Liverpool captain performed a snap dressing-room poll on where they were when Scotland last reached the world's greatest tournament.

And the captain's probe appeared a rhetorical one, with scant few born or old enough to remember the thrills from France in 1998.

But Robertson leaned on recent heartache to evoke inspiration rather than fear.

He revealed: "I said in there to the lads, after the game, I went around a couple of them and asked them what age they were the last time Scotland qualified for a World Cup, because if it was easy, we'd be qualifying every four years, and it's not.

"So, people have come before us, not qualified, we've not qualified, so it's not easy. It's been what, when they come to the next World Cup, it will be 28 years, we are the next group to try and stop it.