As soon as Robert Snodgrass saw his ankle balloon up a few weeks ago, getting fit for Wembley was all he could think about.
“Oh, straight away,” said the Hull City man, who was initially told that the expected recovery time would have kept him out of the England game.
“At club level you have a lot of lads getting paid and stuff like that, but you would play for your country just for the love of playing for your country.
“That’s the truth, for me anyway.
“You have your heart on your sleeve when you play games but playing for your country is special, you dream about it as a wee boy.
“You don’t even think twice when you have some sort of injury, even when medical people tell you you might not make it you do everything you possibly can to get there.
“I’ll be honest, after the game (against Stoke) my ankle was massive, you couldn’t even straighten it. So you do think the worst.
“But 10 or 11 days later before you know it you’re right back into the swing of things.”
Snodgrass scored as a substitute in Hull’s win over Southampton on Saturday but playing 90 minutes on the wide spaces of Wembley might be a push.
“To be honest I’d be lying if I said I am 100 per cent,” he said.
“But it couldn’t have gone any better at club level to come up here with confidence. As soon as it came out with the club saying I’d be out for four weeks I didn’t think it was ever going to be four weeks. It was going to be between two and three so that’s right on schedule for Friday.”
The Snodgrass return from injury was an unexpected bonus for national coach Gordon Strachan, as was the Scott Brown U-turn.
“It’s a massive boost,” said the former Livingston man of Brown’s decision to make himself available again.
“I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect it but he’s a great guy to have about the place first and foremost.
“I watched him a few weeks ago playing against Rangers and he was the best player on the park. I though he looked like the Scott Brown who first burst onto the scene.
“But he also plays with a maturity now which allows him to manage games well. He’s great.
“I’m obviously a Celtic fan so I’ve watched him closely and I think it’s brilliant for the country to have him back.
“I also watched him against Man City and he was a driving force in that match. Every team needs that so we’re delighted to have him back.
“He won’t be worried about playing England. He’ll be raring to go. He’ll have the attitude that he’s back in here and that he means business. That’s exactly what you need to see when you look through your side.
“His return has given us an ideal pick-me-up after the last trip. All of sudden the boys see that he’s back alongside us and we’re delighted about that.”
Speaking of that “last trip”, Snodgrass knows that the loss to Slovakia (and draw with Lithuania) has raised the stakes for London.
Snodgrass, who was a hat-trick hero in Malta to get the World Cup qualifiers off to a flying start, said: “After the opening game against Malta it felt like we were on our way but the last couple of results weren’t good enough.
“That’s very hard to take when you think you have maybe turned the corner.
“But the only way to put it right is to get a result against England. Simple.”
He added: “I think the first goal will be massively important. It would give us real belief in the game if we could score it. They’ll know as well, if they don’t get the first goal, the fans will turn on them.
“So it’s almost like a game of chess, especially when you are going in there as the underdogs. Against the likes of Malta and Lithuania we would be favourites to win the game but it’ll be different down there.
“We’ll need to be ready for them because they have some great talent in their team, as much as people say they are struggling. They have some elite players all playing at a high level.
“It is a good time to get them but they might be thinking the same way about us. The one thing we need to do is get the last trip to Slovakia behind us. But we also need to keep it fresh in our minds that it wasn’t good enough.
“We need to be fully at it and everybody needs to be at their best if we’re to get a result here.”
Their manager could lose his job if Scotland are defeated but Snodgrass insisted: “People can say what they like but as players the one thing we know is that we’re right behind the manager.
“All the lads will tell you the same thing.
“He motivates you, he drives you forward, he keeps you in a frame of mind where you know exactly what it means to play for your country.
“There’s a lot of stuff that you guys don’t see. It brings players on to a level where they love coming to play for the country.”
