After quite a few months of rumour, speculation and wind-ups it was confirmed that Scotland would compete in the invitational Kirin Cup Tournament, along with Bulgaria and hosts Japan. The wisdom of this tour was questioned, as it clashed with the Scottish Cup and the FA Cup, which meant that the Hearts players and Christian Dailly would be missing. Also Scotland hall of fame member and current Celtic Manager Gordon Strachan decided to withdraw all the Celtic players for 'glamour' testimonials against Man U and Newcastle, nice one Gordon ya wee **** :(
So it was an unfamiliar team that started against Bulgaria, who were without Stilian Petrov, however a brace apiece from Kris Boyd and Chris Burke and a goal from McFadden saw us hump Bulgaria 5 - 1 at the impressive Kobe Wing Stadium. Given that Bulgaria had beaten Japan 2 - 1 a few days ago, meant that we had a real chance of winning the tournament in Tokyo in 2 days time.
Match day in Tokyo saw it pissing doon, well it was a Scotland game after all :), but a few beers at the superb Saitama Stadium plus the atmosphere created by the Japanese fans meant that the weather didn't really matter. All we had to do was avoid getting beat by 3 or more goals, something I wouldn't have been all that confident about under Berti. Japan started the match well, urged on by nearly 60'000 fanatical fans but good goalkeeping by Neil Alexander and some awesome tackles by Russell Anderson, plus a good all round effort by the rest of the team saw us hold on for a 0 - 0 draw and go clear at the top of the group.
All in all a very successful trip, won a trophy, Boyd and Burke both scored twice on their debuts and if Craig Gordon gets injured there's a very capable replacement in Neil Alexander.

So Japan-easy........

GROUP TABLE	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
Scotland	2	1	1	0	5	1	4
Bulgaria	2	1	0	1	3	6	3
Japan	2	0	1	1	1	2	1