Inside the Scotland camp after pre Euro 2024 darts night with Alan Soutar

John Carver was only getting in his daily steps as he took a walk round Glasgow’s west end on Wednesday night.

But the buzz he felt oozing out of every pub he passed and every punter he met in the street brought home the reality that Scotland are about to march onto centre stage for one of planet football’s greatest shows. Steve Clarke’s assistant took a break from the team hotel to clear the head and meet his daily workout count as the clock ticks down to the Euro 2024 curtain raiser against the hosts in Munich.

What he felt was a nation getting in the mood to party. It’s a buzz Carver insists is a world away from that which met the build-up to the last Euros during the tail end of covid. Back then even the team were locked down in a bubble at the Rockcliffe Hall hotel in County Durham. This time our Euro stars have relaxed on the golf course, in a darts competition with Scots ace Alan Soutar – and in Carver’s case with a daily leisurely stroll around the city.

It’s an atmosphere the 59-year-old Geordie insists has everyone in his adopted country buzzing for the show to finally get underway. Friendlies against Gibraltar and Finland next week are still to come before Clarke is forced to cut two from his squad.

But Carver reckons in many ways it already feels like the competition is upon us. He said: “Definitely. I even went out for a walk last night, I’m on a fitness campaign believe it or not. But I went for a walk and I was out for two hours and it felt different. One guy stopped me in the street. I had a hoody on and yet he still recognised me.

“But you can tell, you can feel the buzz. I went out the west end way, I could see all the flags and everything in the pubs and the restaurants and it was brilliant. You get a feeling for it, you can touch it. You’ve got to try and control your excitement. But it definitely does feel different.”

Much has been said and written about the team spirit in the Scots camp. It’s all true. Scots arrows ace Soutar shared a pic with Clarke’s troops from the team base earlier this week and Carver insists the preparations have hit the bullseye. Now the light hearted stuff is over and the serious stuff begins with Scotland desperate to land a double against Gibraltar and Finland to ensure everything is oche heading to the Euros after seven games without a win.

Carver said: “We decided to have a couple of days bonding. We had a game of golf. I don’t really want to go on about that because I wasn’t great. My team wasn’t great. Then we had dinner. Alan Soutar came in – world 43, 44 – and he was fantastic, he was amazing. The team behind the scenes were brilliant. We had a great night.

“Some of us got up there and took him on – and some of us lost, some of us won. Go on ask me the question…….yes, I beat him! With all due respect, my first three darts went in the dart-board and that got about 26. But the score-man said it was a hundred. So, I was down to a double quite quickly. It was different, I’ve never seen anything like it before.

“It was all good fun. Some of the guys got dressed up like van Barneveld and the guy with the mohican, Peter Wright. It was great fun. It served its purpose. We will always talk about the spirit and the atmosphere. It is very important to do it at the start of it. It can wear you down a little bit if you start doing it between, but we have done it and it was good to get everyone there and it was a good night.”

Now for the serious stuff. A friendly against Gibraltar will hopefully end that concerning seven-game winless run before Scotland enjoy a Hampden send-off against Finland a week tonight.

Carver knows the importance of heading to Germany on a high. And he wasn’t shying away from the need for two victories. He said: “If you look at the record, we’ve not won in seven games. We have had difficult games against top opposition, I get that. So it’s important that we go into it with a bit of confidence and win some games.

“Everybody thinks we’ll go to Gibraltar and it’s going to be easy. I know that they had some difficult results against Holland and France but so did we. So it’s not like it’s an easy game for us.

“I think they were beaten by Latvia by the odd goal as well, so we’ll go there with the right frame of mind and won’t take anything for granted. But we need to get some results. In the past, our run into the tournament, the previous Euros, was good last time around, so we need to get some victories, for sure.”