Few Scots are anorakish about World Cup statistics. If my countrymen’s attitude to such data had to be linked with an item of apparel it would be the balaclava, worn back-to-front. There has to be a measure of self-protection against the many decades of facts and figures showing not only that Scotland have never progressed beyond the first stage of the World Cup finals but that the strongest group of players ever assembled to represent the nation in the competition (the team of Denis Law, Jim Baxter, John White, Ian St John and Paddy Crerand) didn’t even make it to the 1962 tournament in Chile.

In case you were wondering, that distant frustration does have at least a tangential relevance to next year’s global championship and one that is apt to encourage the eight countries going into the draw at Fifa headquarters in Zurich tomorrow for the playoffs that will identify the last four of Europe’s 13 contenders in South Africa.

My first-hand memories of how Scotland lost a 1961 qualifying playoff after extra-time at Heysel stadium in Brussels are no less galling because they went agonisingly close to beating Czechoslovakia, who subsequently progressed all the way to the World Cup final.

In the Santiago climax, the absence of the injured Pele was insufficient to prevent Brazil from retaining the crown they had claimed for the first time in Sweden four years earlier. But it should be a source of hope for those in tomorrow’s draw, whether seeded like France and Portugal, or unseeded like the Republic of Ireland, that the Czechs squeezed into the finals by the back door and then battled through to within 90 minutes of the great prize. Germany, of course, found similar late momentum in 2002, when they struggled in their qualifying group (unforgettably losing 5-1 to England in Munich), had to defeat Ukraine in a playoff to reach the finals in Japan and South Korea and yet finished as runners-up to Brazil.

So there are precedents to bolster Giovanni Trapattoni’s faith in the capacity of the Republic of Ireland squad to pass the imminent two-leg survival test and be a forceful presence in South Africa. But the limitations of his men’s collective talent and their current level of form will keep optimism in check. Even the national appetite for a wager is unlikely to steer many Irishmen towards plunging on the playoff outcome, and the bookmaker who is offering 200-1 against the Republic’s chances of being world champions won’t expect the price to prove magnetic.

Layers can presumably count on the English to be less circumspect about the range of odds (between 11-2 and 7-1) available to anyone who is confident the glory drought endured since 1966 is about to end. Now that the scale and substance of the challenge to be faced in eight months’ time is becoming clearer, there is undoubtedly justification for believing England, under the rigorous and perceptive guidance of Fabio Capello, are entitled to head south in the summer without feeling remotely overawed. Nobody should imagine, however, that they are starting out with the best prospects they have had in generations. Japan in 2002 was their most inviting opportunity since the reign of Alf Ramsey. England should have won a comprehensively undistinguished tournament, and probably would have done had they been managed by Capello instead of the unassertive, indecisive Sven-Göran Eriksson. But the players, too, were seriously culpable, especially in lacking resilience and initiative in a quarter-final that should never have been surrendered to Brazil.

I was happy to back England in Japan and may be tempted again but, the impressive Italian influence notwithstanding, the portents are not as persuasive. Brazil look more potent than they were in 2002 and it is always obligatory to remember that their record haul of five World Cup triumphs owes much to having the game’s most adaptable footballers. All their successes have been gained outside their homeland and they alone have captured the ultimate championship on a foreign continent (winning it in Europe and Asia is surely in a different category from Argentina’s achievement in Mexico in 1986). Of course, back in 1966 England never played anywhere but Wembley, which added an extra dimension to the privileges of the host nation.

But perhaps the first staging of the World Cup finals on African soil will, for obvious historical reasons, be a less disruptively exotic experience for Capello’s players than for some of their rivals. They certainly deserve their third place in the betting, behind the joint favourites Spain (who outclassed them in a friendly last February) and Brazil. Still, the urge to translate emotional support for England into financial commitment is not yet overwhelming. And I’ve a suspicion my caution is there to stay.

Binocular brings dreams into focus

Anybody claiming to have looked five months ahead and sorted out an irresistible punting opportunity at the Cheltenham Festival in March may seem to be talking crystal balls. But it’s a less fanciful optical instrument that is in my mind as thoughts turn away from Flat racing towards the long crescendo of dramatic action with which the National Hunt season will build to those climactic four days in the Cotswolds.

Binocular convinces me, and counselling friends far better equipped to judge, that he is capable of making the 2010 Champion Hurdle an agreeable sight. Perhaps optimism is dangerously over-nourished by the profits gained from having received expert and early warning of the uniqueness of Sea The Stars but, though the transition from being sanguine to being a gory casualty is often rapid for me at the racetrack, as of now any doubt associated with a long-range investment in Binocular is confined to wondering if the bet struck at 5-1 is big enough.

Those reacting sceptically to the suggestion that JP McManus’s French import is the best two-mile hurdler in training may insist he still has to prove himself the best in his own yard, since he finished half-a-length (and only third) behind his stablemate Punjabi in the Champion last season. But nobody could be surprised — least of all Nicky Henderson, who trains both horses at Lambourn in Berkshire — when Binocular remained the top-rated hurdler after that race. He started 6-4 favourite on the day, Punjabi at 22-1, and if that discrepancy exaggerated the difference in their abilities it is surely substantial.

Binocular probably does more than any other animal in a string of 150 to quicken Henderson’s pulse as he emerges from the three-month ban imposed by the British Horseracing Authority for administering an anti-bleeding drug to one of his charges last February. As he returned to full control of his Seven Barrows stable a week ago, with no trace of diminishment in his enthusiasm, his popularity or the loyalty of his owners (including the Queen, whose Moonlit Path was the horse given the prohibited substance tranexamic acid), the trainer had a right to assume Binocular’s most glorious days lie in the future. It needn’t be a worry that the five-year-old gelding’s only two defeats in seven outings as a hurdler came, a year apart, at Cheltenham. A weather- affected preparation rather than an aversion to the track explained the reduction in zest that narrowly prevented him from overhauling Punjabi and Celestial Halo last spring.

At peak fitness, Binocular travels beautifully through his races, negotiates the obstacles with swift fluency and accelerates decisively when asked. I expect to be cheering when Tony McCoy does the asking on March 16.

Coach off the rails

A sniper firing tranquillising darts might have provided the best response to Diego Maradona’s lurid tirade against his media critics after Argentina scrambled to outright qualification for the World Cup finals by beating Uruguay 1-0 in Montevideo on Wednesday. The Fifa inquiry into his filibuster of abuse, that squalid tour de force of sexual insults, should involve a panel of psychiatrists. It should also probe the workings of those governing Argentinian football and specifically how they came to convince themselves it was appropriate to put the national team under the control (if that’s not a ludicrous term in the circumstances) of somebody who was always a sadly, hopelessly unstable individual even while he was demonstrating a genius for playing the game that only Pele has surpassed. The Maradona utterance that was perhaps most outrageous had nothing to do with his torrent of gutter imagery. It was his claim that his players had made him ‘feel like a real coach’.