Scotland good at sport?

[OC Richard]

Scotland's bottom-of-the-table position in the T20 World Cup standings, and their identical position in Six Nations, made me start wondering about the sad position of Scotland in the 'wide world of sport'.

Well there's a big Six Nations match today against England! And maybe the Scots can start improving their position.

In football, the qualifying for Euro 2016 and the 2018 World Cup is so convoluted that I can't comprehend it. Seems that who they play and how they fare in friendlies could impact qualifying? From what I read there's a friendly coming up with Ireland which could decide what "pot" they get into?

This map says it all, about the European Championships



In any case from what I read they're in 3rd place in their group for Euro 2016 and 4th in their group for the World Cup 2018, so there seems to be hope. (Scotland's World Cup history makes for sobering reading, qualifying five straight times 74-90 but making first round exits each time, last qualifying in 98 with a similar result.)

Better yet is that from what I read they have qualified for the 2015 Rugby World Cup coming up in England in September. My wife and I will definitely watch every match that's televised here.

In Rugby Sevens, Scotland has a nice position in the World Series standings (8th) but I understand that Scotland will lose host nation status due to poor attendance. I recently attended USA Sevens and attendance was the highest ever for this particular event, over 70,000 I believe I read.

Well, it's not like the USA has anything to crow about. We do qualify for the World Cup (football/soccer) every time due to our fairly easy path, but don't get very far. Rugby for us is still 'a work in progress'.

There's a baseball world cup every four years, a recent development, and we don't do very well in that despite baseball being an American sport. The 16-nation tournament has been held three times (06, 09, 13) and the USA's best finish was 4th place in 2009. The USA is second-bottom table in the all-time standings.

It is encouraging to see the USA participate more in various international sports and break out a bit from our traditional sporting isolationism.