Scots survive on passion and good fortune

The silence of thousands of oranged-shirted Dutch supporters as they streamed solemn-faced from Villa Park spoke eloquently of the success of Scotland's 80-1 outsiders in their first European Championship match. The Netherlands are second favourites for the title and Scotland were lumped with Turkey as the tournament no-hopers, but all that looked ridiculous after this stirring scoreless draw. It was a game the Netherlands were expected to win and Scotland certainly rode their luck through an amazing 90 minutes.

The Dutch had over 60 per cent of the possession, but a magnificent Scottish rearguard and a large slice of good fortune leaves Scotland with the most important game in years against the oldest foes, England. Group A was seen as a straightforward march to the quarter-finals for England and the Netherlands, but it's now all square with Scotland cock-a-hoop for the Saturday showdown at Wembley.

Scottish coach Craig Brown was happy to see an unfortunate trend broken with this desperately hard-fought result. 'I have been with the Scottish team for the last three major tournaments and we have lost all three opening games which makes it very, very hard,' said Brown. 'Now we are going to Wembley knowing that we can do what no Scottish team has done and get past the first round. 'We are delighted to be going to play England with the confidence of having a draw today - that's 100 per cent better than our usual opening games.

We are not shouting too much about our performance, but we'll be a difficult team to beat . 'We will try to be more positive to get three points and it is our objective to qualify by winning.' The Dutch were denied a clear-cut penalty early in the game when the Scottish defence were under immense pressure.

John Collins, who had a titanic game, clearly used his hand to stop a goal-bound effort but the referee was not in a position to see it. In the end this came down to straightforward passion and utter determination from the Scottish side whose pre-tournament strength was seen in some quarters as being the fact that they were without a big name.

Unlike previous odysseys to World Cup and European Championships there were no huge expectations about Brown's hard-working outfit, but they did come through the entire qualifying period conceding only three goals.