IN THE NAME OF OF THE BIG MAN

Boss joins 50 club of Roxburgh, Broon and Stein but can't bring himself to call the legend 'Jock'

-  KEITH JACKSON

IT just goes to show that Steve Clarke can't control everything.

He may have planned for a few days of warm weather training on the Turkish coast.

But when Scotland arrived in Antalya on Sunday afternoon, they flew into the kind of weather they had hoped to be leaving behind.

Or, to put it somewhat more succinctly, in Clarke's own words: "It was absolutely p***ing with rain when we first got here so the first training session was in the middle of a thunderstorm! "But since then we've had two great days of sunshine, a nice environment to train in and hopefully we've used our time wisely.

He might not be able to affect the elements sent down from above. But as Clarke arrived here in Tbilisi last night, after making the short hop over on a team charter, he did give off the image of a man shaping his own destiny as well as that of his team.

Tonight, when he sends them out against Georgia, it will be his 50th game in charge of the national side.

He's only the fourth man in history to have reached that significant milestone, behind Craig Brown, Andy Roxburgh and Jock Stein.

Brown had the honour 72 times, Roxburgh 61 and Stein 68.

With five more to come before next summer's Euros in Germany, Clarke is already standing on the shoulders of giants.

He just doesn't like talking about it too much.

"Somebody told me about that about five minutes ago. I didn't know this would be my 50th game.

"Listen, it's a nice number and it obviously shows I must have done a half decent job to be here after 50 games so hopefully we can keep that going into the upcoming games, which are important for us, and into the future as well.

"It's nice to be spoken about in the same breath as in Tbilisi these guys. They all did very well for the country so it's nice to have your name linked and associated with people of that standard.