WHO IS TARTAN ARMY?

There is a quite simple answer to the above question. The Tartan Army refers to the Supporters of the Scotland National Football Team who regularly attend matches both home and away. There are of course vast numbers of fans who attend the home matches and a hard core of about 1,000 fans who travel to almost all away matches. This number swells to between 5,000 and 20,000 travelling fans when Scotland reach the final stages of any major tournament (e.g. European Championships or the World Cup). Of course the greatest attraction of all comes when we play our neighbours and greatest rivals - England (The Auld Enemy).

The Tartan Army, although being somewhat loud when travelling, has built itself a reputation for being friendly and open. We are not hooligans and unlike our counterpart (and rival) supporters in England, we are always welcome back if we are to play any team again.

The Tartan Army (unfortunately unlike the Scotland Team) were champions at the European Championship finals in 1992. UEFA awarded the Supporters Award to the Scots for being the most loyal, friendly and best behaved fans to attend the championships. In the 1996 UEFA finals in England, the Scotland fans came second in the Supporters league behind the Dutch (who came second last time). EURO'96 saw the English fans smash up their own country (got to be pretty thick to do that !!) and again win themselves bugger all.

One fan described the Tartan Army as follows ... We are not an organisation, rather, we are a disorganisation ... which sums things up rather nicely. Fans reading through should note also that the Tartan Army Home Pages have no connection with any marketing firm which purports to 'officially' represent the tartan army and market Tartan Army souveniers to the public.

If you are not interested in the Tartan Army or Scottish Football then why not link to some more general information on Scotland at Scotland Info - good links to Scots pages & other info.

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