Yorkshire Tartan Army

Today saw the launch of the new kit which will be used for the first half of our qualifying campaign, and the first one from our partnership with Adidas. There had been much specualtion about the launch of this kit after the Diadora kits that we've had recently, with Adidas being a bigger brand and able to offer higher quality products. The kit itself is an interim solution and will be worn until Summer 2011 until a completely original design will be produced, whereas this kit is mainly an existing adidas template with a little customisation.

The main talking point of the shirt appears to be the badge on the front of the shirt, which depending on the angle of the photographs, can look very prominent although I think full judgement until the shirt goes on sale in June.

A yellow away shirt will be unveiled later in the summer.

So we've known for a while now which teams were in Group I with us, and after having time to digest this information we've been eagerly waiting the news of the fixture schedule and it was announced yesterday after a short meeting in Spain between all five associations, and Craig Levein and Gordon Smith have managed to come away with a decent set of fixtures this time, and an improvement on the schedule of our last group. 

Although the lack of Saturday home games is a bit frustrating (only 1 out of the 4), and the new Friday dates mean extra days off work for those away trips, it certainly could have been a lot worse. The 11 month gap is unusual and splits the group in half as we will have played all the teams before the break so we'll know exactly what we have to do and what we'll be up against come the second round of games.

The draw for the European Championship qualifiers was made this morning and Scotland have been drawn in Group I along with Spain, Czech Republic, Lithuania and Liechtenstein.

It is another smaller group with only 5 teams in total, which should in theory enable the fixtures to be more spread out over the 13 month campaign, with less double headers than would have been the case with a 6 team group. Overall, it's a good group with some familiar faces in Lithuania and the Czech Republic and a new team that we haven't faced before in Liechtenstein which should leave us with a good chance of getting a play-off spot, with Spain heavy favourites to win the group.