ALPetite for destruction

Scots ready to whip up a storm in rain-lashed Bavaria as phoney war ends

- KEITH JACKSON

THEY left Hampden Park under a bit of a cloud after Finland on Friday night.

And yesterday Scotland’s players pulled the boots back on amidst driving rain storms in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

But Steve Clarke and righthand man John Carver remain in the sunniest of dispositions as the clock ticks down to the point when all of this tournament groundwork will finally count for something.

For them, the phoney war is over at last.

Friday night in Munich is all there is left to focus on now that their base camp has been established here at the foot of the Bavarian Alps and the serious business of preparing to tackle the Germans in their own backyard can begin.

Yesterday was the last of the light-hearted stuff – a public training session put on for the locals in the effort to win hearts and minds.

From this morning, however, Clarke and Carver will begin drawing up their battle plans for the Group A opener behind closed doors.

What comes next, is really all that matters.

Which is precisely why the coaching team remains so upbeat despite a recent run of results and performances which have done so much to put a dampener on the buildup to what could yet become a long hot summer at the Euros.

Carver seemed particularly keen to stress yesterday that Scotland’s planning has been timed to perfection, despite the disappointing nature of last week’s big send-off against the Finns and the feelings of gloom it has left behind.

He said: “You’re always going to get that. We just have to be strong enough and hard enough not to take any real notice of it because, at the end of the day, it is about what happens at the end of the Euros. It’s about our preparation for that.