Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown stood among the Tartan Army at Gillette Stadium on Saturday evening as Scotland edged past Haiti, bringing an agonising 36-year wait for a World Cup victory to an end. Brown’s lifelong bond with Scottish football—stretching b
In the final, agonising minutes of Scotland’s victory over Haiti at Gillette Stadium on Saturday evening, Gordon Brown didn’t look like a politician caught up in history. He looked like a fan trying not to flinch.
With his hands clasped tightly behind his head. Brown stood inside the Tartan Army as the heat of a New England evening pressed down on a stand full of men. women and children whose faces were painted blue and white. The fear was visible: not just of what could happen next. but of what a long wait could cost if it ended the wrong way.
As Britain’s last Scottish prime minister queued with thousands of supporters on his way into the ground. he became a magnet for the kind of recognition football can still deliver at full volume. Fans stopped him for pictures outside and inside the stadium. Groups of lads formed around him for mass selfies. When John McGinn scored, one man rushed over and tousled Brown’s hair. Another shook his hand earnestly and said Brown was his hero.
Brown is not known for being particularly demonstrative in politics, but that changes at football. When the names of Scotland’s players were read out an hour or so before kick-off and their faces appeared on the giant screens at each end of the stadium, Brown responded with thumbs-ups to each one.
The evening carried him back to everything that made football matter to him in the first place. When the music to ‘Bonnie Banks o Loch Lomond’ began to play, Brown sang along softly. When the two squads came out and gathered around the centre circle in front of their national flags. he nodded at the passion and the beauty of the supporters’ rendition of Flower of Scotland. He also said he was proud of the friendliness shown between the Scotland and Haiti supporters.
For Brown, the night wasn’t only about a result. It was about a football journey that has taken almost 70 years. He was at the 1990 World Cup in Genoa when Scotland last won a match in the tournament by beating Sweden 2-1, and now—after all that time—he had witnessed another victory.
Fifteen years ago. Brown had promised his younger son he would take him to a World Cup match when Scotland next qualified. He said he had started to wonder if he would ever be able to fulfil that promise. Saturday ended that worry with the pair standing side by side at an occasion they would both cherish for the rest of their lives.
Brown’s connection to the game runs deep, and it began long before he was ever Prime Minister. His father took him to his first Raith Rovers game in 1958, when he was seven. He earned a few shillings by selling programmes outside the ground in Kirkcaldy. and got in for free about 20 minutes after kick-off. Brown has recalled that it taught him “mathematics. economics and finance. ” a lesson he framed as something the game gave him even then.
After becoming an MP, he would go on to involve himself with Raith Rovers in practical ways—persuading Craig Levein to become Raith manager, helping with the signing of the centre-back Marvin Andrews, and intervening to rescue the club from problematic owners.
He remembers listening to Scotland’s 9-3 demolition by England in 1961. with Frank Haffey—who played for Celtic—being the goalkeeper before he emigrated to Australia not long afterwards. Years later. Denis Law travelled to Australia and met Haffey. who asked whether it was safe for him to come back. Law replied “no.”.
Brown’s footballing hero is Jim Baxter, the great Scottish midfielder who began his career at Raith Rovers. Baxter’s influence has never left him, even in the small details. In Brown’s home outside Edinburgh. his office on the top floor holds only two pictures on the wall: one of his children. and the other of Baxter. When Baxter died in 2001, Brown gave a reading at his funeral in Glasgow Cathedral.
On Saturday, Brown pointed back to that thread between local football and the Scotland shirt. “Jim Baxter came from Fife and played for Raith Rovers,” he said. “He started off as a coal miner and his mother was a member of the Labour Party. In that match in 1967, where Scotland beat England after England had won the World Cup, Baxter played brilliantly. I used to watch him when I was growing up but then he got sold to Rangers.”.
Brown added: “I’ve always been a supporter of Raith Rovers and when you see a player like Baxter playing for your local team and then playing in the Scotland shirt, you get an idea of the golden thread that links one with the other.”
Then came the blunt feeling behind it all: “I am a patriot. I feel Scottish football should be given the stages it deserves. That makes you want Scotland to do well. The Scotland team is a very strong reflection of our sense of Scottishness.”
Saturday also tied directly back to his record at World Cups. This was the fourth World Cup where Brown has watched Scotland play. He went to every one of their games in Spain in 1982. including the 5-2 victory over New Zealand in Malaga. the 4-1 defeat to Brazil in Seville and the 2-2 draw with the Soviet Union in Malaga. David Narey’s opening goal in that game against Brazil is his favourite moment watching his country play. Brown said: “When you see the scoreboard and it says Scotland 1-0 Brazil. you think you have got a chance.” He continued: “But then the Brazilian drumbeat took over the ground and Brazil stepped up. They scored some wonderful goals that day as well. Zico’s free kick was unstoppable.”.
He was in Genoa at Italia 90 when Scotland secured victory over Sweden, and he was at the opening game of the 1998 World Cup when Scotland suffered a narrow defeat to Brazil in the Stade de France.
After Saturday’s win, Brown put the emotion into numbers that felt personal rather than historical. “It is the first time I have seen Scotland win at a World Cup for 36 years,” he said. “and I think I was more nervous today than I was in 1990. What happened tonight can change the way people think about a country. It has taken so long and it means so much.”.
Gordon Brown Scotland Haiti Gillette Stadium Tartan Army John McGinn World Cup 36-year wait Raith Rovers Jim Baxter