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Drama likely when Scotland play England in world's oldest fixture on Tuesday

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England may now regard their main soccer foes as Argentina and Germany but nothing matches their old historic rivalry with Scotland, even if the intense passion the games once produced is largely cloaked in sepia-toned nostalgia.

Tuesday's match at Celtic Park in Glasgow will be the 112th meeting of the nations who met in the world's first official international at the West of Glasgow Cricket Ground in 1872. The match ended 0-0. It did not set much of a precedent.

The next goalless draw came 98 years later and there has only been one since then, in 1987, with the 'Auld Enemy' game traditionally producing drama with goals aplenty. Never more so than on April 15, 1961 at Wembley when England won 9-3, inflicting Scotland's biggest ever defeat.

England's Jimmy Greaves scored a hat-trick while future England manager Bobby Robson opened the scoring.

"There was little in the way of TV footage in the early 60s, so maybe we all remember ourselves as better players than we really were," said England fullback Jimmy Armfield, recalling the match vividly years later.

"But if memory serves correct, we were pretty tasty in that match," he explained before the teams met in a European Championship qualifier in 1999.

"Every time we played Scotland the tension was unbelievable. I first remember playing against them at Hampden Park in 1960 and the crowds there then were about 120,000.

"When we drove to Hampden, the streets were lined with people and it wasn't to wish us Happy Christmas. In fact they all seemed to want to show us their wedding-ring fingers!"

UNOFFICIAL CHAMPIONS

Scotland's most memorable victory came exactly six years to the day after the 9-3 defeat, on April 15, 1967 when they inflicted a 3-2 defeat on Alf Ramsey's side, their first reverse since being crowned world champions the previous summer.

Denis Law was among the Scottish scorers, the flamboyant Jim Baxter taunted England by playing "keepie-uppie" in the closing minutes and Scotland crowned themselves the unofficial world champions as a result.

Ten years later, they came back to Wembley, won 2-1 and their fans infamously destroyed the goals afterwards.

The match, part of the old British international Championship, was for many years the only one shown live during the season on British TV -- along with the FA Cup final.

But by the mid-1980s, the championship had lost its allure and was scrapped, although the England v Scotland game limped on in the short-lived Rous Cup until 1989.

Since then, the only meetings have been in Euro '96 at Wembley when Paul Gascoigne scored a memorable goal in a 2-0 England win, the two-legged Euro 2000 playoff in 1999 and last August's friendly at Wembley.

England won that 3-2 with debutant Rickie Lambert maintaining the fixture's dramatic legacy by heading the winner with his first touch in international football minutes after coming on as a substitute.

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