It was 7.15am in the morning and I was sharing a flight with perhaps the drunkest man in the history of aviation. This Scotland supporter was seemingly travelling alone, though that was hard to decipher at first as he slurred his stream of consciousness toward every red-eye around him.
He sported a Nessie hat and a thousand-yard gaze that could only have been achieved by deciding the best way to wake up for an early flight after getting on the lash was simply not to go to bed. As the flight to Cologne from Edinburgh went on he got increasingly more legless. It didn't take a master sleuth to decipher the cans of Fanta being thirstily guzzled down contained more than just fizzy juice.
Other passengers tried to keep this stumbling Euro 2024 holidaymaker in check as he banged on the fuselage shortly before landing, but he would soon hold up the bus to the terminal having been the last person off the flight, fall into the double doors after the bus arrived, and then skip half of the passport-control queue only to make a wrong turn and wind up at the back of the line again. While I was very much looking forward to traversing Germany as I followed Steve Clarke and the boys around each of the host cities in the group stages, despite having tickets for just one of them, it was this type of Scotland supporter that stirred a mild anxiety around how this trip was going to go. The Tartan Army have always held a sterling reputation for their ability to sing, laugh, joke and drink to excess.
