Why did Scotland withdraw in 1950?

[ZeekLTK]

Just wondering... why did Scotland withdraw from the 1950 World Cup after they had already qualified for it?

They would have been in Uruguay's group, and it looks like they weren't too bad (only lost to England 1-0 in qualifiers and beat both Wales and Northern Ireland pretty good, 2-0 and 8-2) so there might have been a chance of beating them... which would have changed the course of history since Uruguay-Brazil would have never happened, it would have been Scotland-Brazil.

[nach0king]

Scotland weren't British champions so they decided not to go; only England went (and we all know what happened after that :D)

I think, since the Home Nations had only just rejoined FIFA, they still held it and its competitions in fairly low regard.

[Benin Dahomey]

my grandad would have played in that world cup if scotland hadn't withdrawn. :(

basically, although the top two in the group were to qualify, the sfa in all their wisdom said they would only go if scotland won the home nations championship (or whatever it was called). qualifying was more regional than it is today. the british isles made up a qualifying group. anyway, scotland finished second in the group to england and so never went to the world cup.

just goes to show that having a bunch of idiots running the game is something of a tradition in scotland.