Vladimir McTavish: The journey is more important than the destination? Maybe not

Particularly since their last game was played on a Monday night, when sensible people try to avoid going to the pub.

Of course, for the hard-core supporters in the Tartan Army, this is still no substitute for actually being there. And so it was, at the start of the week some of the country’s more ardent fans made the long trip to a small city in Hungary nobody had heard of to show their support, even though they weren’t able to get into the game.

Due to the Belarus government’s support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, their country’s football team have been ordered by football’s governing body FIFA to play their games behind closed doors at neutral venues. Hence the long trek to Zalaegerzeg to a certain lock-out. One wag, interviewed on the lunchtime news, said they did it for the camaraderie and that “quite often the 90 minutes is the worst part of the trip”.

I feel for them, as I have had a pretty epic European journey of my own this week. In search of some late summer sun, my wife and I were flying out to Mallorca on Tuesday.

It turns out we’d have been better off staying put. Palma Airport was thrown into chaos due to severe thunderstorms and flooding, whereas it was a lovely sunny day in Edinburgh.

I know that because I spent three hours in departures looking out of the window at the lovely weather. And then, once on board the plane, I was able to enjoy the sunshine through my porthole for another two hours before we finally took off.

After landing five hours late, we had to wait another two hours for our luggage to arrive.

There’s nothing like a nice, relaxing break. And this journey was nothing like nice or relaxing. Thankfully I am now on holiday and hopefully will have enough time to recover before the trip home.

In hindsight, it would have been easier, quicker and a whole lot more fun to travel cross-country to some outpost in Hungary not to see the Scotland game.