Obscure Euro 1980 qualifiers schedule

Apparently Alex McLeish made his debut for Scotland in that game.

HTH

 

I love trying to research things like this.

Scotland v Portugal was supposed to be played on February 6, 1980.
But heavy snow hit Glasgow the prior week. With the pitch in a disastrous state and no set timetable on when it could be worked on, the Scottish FA informed UEFA and the FPF on February 2 that the match should be postponed. This was done to avoid players and officials from making a worthless trip.

It should be noted that this was the second Euro qualifying fixture in Glasgow that was postponed.
Scotland v Belgium was originally supposed to be played on February 7, 1979. But due to the severe cold weather that hit during the 'Winter of Discontent' the match was postponed sine die. It was eventually played ten months later on December 19. This explains the unusual scheduling of the game taking place just one month after their first meeting, Belgium v Scotland on November 17.

It's interesting to note the the draw for the 1980 Euro Finals took place on *January 16, 1980.
Yet there were three qualifiers played after the draw had been conducted:
6 February 1980 : England v Ireland
6 February 1980 : Scotland v Portugal, postponed to March 26.
27 February 1980 : West Germany v Malta
As far as I could find, those were the original scheduled dates for all three fixtures. (Part of me is not fully convinced of this. I'll try to do more digging.)
Both England-Ireland and W.Germany-Malta were played on those dates listed.

* A few publications list the draw as having taken place on February 16 but I found a Spanish newspaper clipping dated January 16 saying the draw was to take place "today", The January 17 edition listed the results of the draw. Interestingly, the draws for the quarterfinals of the three UEFA club competitions took place the same day