We will be taking a look at a different FIL team each day leading up to the tournament in Denver.
The men in kilts are looking to improve on their improving run that they have had since the 2006 World Championships, where they took 11th out of 21 teams. Since the 2006 World Championships Scotland has gone up to ninth after the ’08 European Championships, seventh in the ’10 World Championships, and finally sixth after the ’12 European Championships.
Scotland has for the most part been a team that is just outside the top teams in the world. Very few teams have been as consistent on the world stage, the only teams that have been as consistent have been the Blue Division teams of Australia, Canada, Japan, the Iroquois, The USA, and Scotland’s neighbor England.
Scotland spent part of the fall on a tour of the United States taking on Stony Brook, C.W. Post, and Adelphi. They played well and gave all three teams a fight they may not have expected. With the run in American games Scotland had 42 players with as it was an early round of the tryout process.
The Scottish side has not released their final roster for the championships yet. Although it may be right to assume that the group will include Jesse Fehr, former Harvard/Duke Attackmen currently playing in the NLL on the Philadelphia Wings roster. Other than that the Scottish side is a bit of a mystery until the team is announced, hopefully sometime this week.
Scotland seems to want to keep the team a mystery and be a dark horse in the tournament. This could serve them well as almost every other team has announced their roster AND because Scotland can make that jump into the quarterfinals, or maybe even farther.
If all plays out the right way for the Scots they will have to play the winner of the Turquoise Division, which would be either Colombia, Finland, Mexico, or Spain. After that they would theoretically play the winner of the game between the winners of the Green Division and the Plum Division. Green Division holds China, Italy, Netherlands and Norway. While the Plum Division has Argentina, New Zealand, Russia and Wales. The favorites out of these two groups would be Wales and the Netherlands.
Prior to the start of the tournament Scotland will be playing two tune up games against two Blue Division teams, Canada and Japan.
Scotland is in the White Division for group play. They will start their tournament off with a 1 pm ET game against World Championship newcomer, Thailand. The game will be broadcast on ESPN3 along with a number of other games starting at various times throughout the day.
Good luck to the Scots and if you are out at the World Championships make sure you get to see them play and hear the bagpipes that are said to be there with the team.
