THE atmosphere surrounding Scotland games is usually so good-natured and unthreatening that it was jolting to witness the repercussions of the sporadic violence that accompanied the midweek visit to Ukraine. Those of us who flew back from Kyiv with supporters on Thursday did not have to look far to find a fellow passenger sporting a black eye or a graze, or swapping anecdotes about how they became an innocent victim of the attacks by a mob of local hooligans, which marauded around the streets of the Ukrainian capital.

The unprovoked assaults brought an ugly edge to the occasion and had fans on their guard for the remainder of their trip, and they deepened the impression of last week being an unusually unruly, lawless one for a Scotland fixture. From Garry O’Connor becoming a 1970s throwback by breaking an SFA curfew and partying his way into early international retirement, to the moment Steven Pressley was red-carded for bringing down Andriy Shevchenko, it was a fraught week.

If Scotland’s supporters can still claim to be innocents, the same cannot currently be said of their team. It will be worth keeping an eye on the players the next time the fans belt out their occasional song about being “he best behaved supporters in the world”. Some in the team could be forgiven for shuffling self-consciously and avoiding eye contact. Maybe the supporters go overboard when they talk up their record for impeccable behaviour but by and large they are no trouble for the local constabularies. In contrast, referees are finding the Scotland team a handful. Never mind best behaved in the world; Scotland cannot claim to be the best behaved of the seven countries in their Euro 2008 qualifying group.

Scotland have enough disadvantages to contend with without coming up with self-inflicted new ones. Injuries habitually deny the manager of a significant player or two at every round of fixtures and others he would like to choose have a precarious hold on their national jerseys as a result of not playing enough first team football for their clubs. Those are an ominous couple of obstacles for a country with Scotland’s limited resources, but the manager’s job is made measurably more difficult when the team shows a damaging inclination to accumulate yellow and red cards and suspensions.

Morale became so low under Berti Vogts that players would exaggerate the state of minor ailments in order to withdraw themselves from Scotland squads. No such reluctance applies under Walter Smith – everyone from Darren Fletcher and Barry Ferguson down is desperate for inclusion – but players are unwittingly absenting themselves by being careless in their awareness of what referees are required to punish these days. Cautionable fouls are an occupational hazard for a side that has to play with Scotland’s brand of aggressive competitiveness, but in the four ties so far there also have been bookings for silly offences such as time wasting and unsporting conduct. Swedish referee Martin Hansson gave Ukraine a soft penalty for their second goal in Wednesday’s 2-0 win, but I cannot go along with Smith’s claim that Hansson and Switzerland’s Busacca – who booked three home players and no French ones at Hampden last Saturday – had it in for Scotland while being awed by their opponents.

In the four qualifying matches so far, 11 yellows cards, one red, and five suspensions have been accumulated for an average of three cards per game. When it comes to pointing the finger of blame the referees cannot be the first recipients. If it carried on at that rate, a club would rack up over 120 cards in an SPL season. Because of suspensions, France had to be confronted without Kenny Miller and Ukraine without Christian Dailly, and when the Group B fixtures resume with the tie at home to Georgia on March 24 Pressley, Fletcher and James McFadden will be twiddling their thumbs in Hampden’s South Stand. The creative contributions of Fletcher and McFadden will be particularly missed against opposition who have shown themselves to be stuffy, and who will have to be beaten if Scotland’s qualification hopes are to endure. Smith has been prepared to tolerate the snowfall of bookings on the basis that most have been received for offences that demonstrate forceful commitment rather than any attempt to bend the rules. Scotland teams were being criticised for their supposed lack of passion when he took over, he has argued, so it would be hypocritical to now berate them for the punishments that can come with trying too hard.

“The frustrating aspect is I don’t think we are overly aggressive in our play,” he said, when reflecting at the end of the week on the defeat in Kyiv. “I can’t see that Scotland are doing anything any worse yet we have accumulated all these cards.

“On one hand we are asking for a level of commitment. We are not short of that commitment but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is reflected in bad tackling. You aren’t seeing opposing players getting carried off against Scotland. There is hardly a bad challenge yet we have got all these bookings. If the bookings were balanced I would have to say fair enough, but they haven’t been balanced. I’m not complaining about the result in Ukraine, just that it seems to be very simple bookings that Scotland are getting. I think they [referees] have started to think that if a team is achieving some decent results they are getting them through an aggressive manner. I didn’t think we would lose as many to suspensions as we have done after a third of the qualifying games.”

Playing 5-4-1 and sitting in against superior opposition puts a team under stress, but it is possible to play a defensive, pressing game without conceding the volume of silly fouls Scotland have, though. Rather than nurturing a persecution complex Smith will hopefully resort to his usual pragmatic common sense and remind the players to tackle with care and intelligence.

Kyiv was a downer but Euro 2008 has been hugely encouraging for Scotland so far. Smith will have his suspensions to overcome against Georgia in five months, O’Connor is a goner and it also may be impossible for the manager to continuing selecting David Weir and Christian Dailly unless by then they are getting more the first team football than they are at the moment. But the prospect of Gary Naysmith, Nigel Quashie, Andy Webster, Jackie McNamara, Shaun Maloney and Chris Burke being available again is a warming thought to sustain him through the winter. And look on the bright side: until the next game in March the only cards he will see are Christmas ones.