Don Revie knew where the threat lay.

As he prepared his England team to face Scotland at Wembley in June 1977, he focused on defending set-pieces. Having previously worked with Gordon McQueen and Joe Jordan, he knew that the visitors would be strong and forceful in the air. "Joe Corrigan, the goalkeeper who was in the England squad at the time, played the part of me in their training sessions," recalled McQueen. "Obviously, he didn't play the part well enough."

When Asa Hartford flighted the ball from a free-kick into the England penalty area, nobody could prevent McQueen from leaping highest into the air and sending a powerful header into the net. It seemed fitting that even detailed preparations could not suppress the Scotland team. Wembley had never hosted so many fans from north of the border; even as the players arrived by coach to the ground early in the day, they could sense that something raw and vivid was occurring. "Going up Wembley Way was something out of the ordinary," McQueen said. "I was thinking, 'where did all these Scottish fans come from', because it looked like more than double the number there would normally be."

At times, the sheer, instinctive passion of the Scots for these occasions could be overwhelming. Ally MacLeod, the Scotland manager, had already mastered his routine of filling the support - even the nation - with an unrestrained confidence. The home side were the underdogs, in part because of this heady optimism, but also because when the players looked around the dressing room they saw team-mates of undisputed quality: Danny McGrain, Willie Donnachie, Hartford, Kenny Dalglish and Jordan all started.

"We had a better side than England," McQueen said. "The whole nation was euphoric, because Ally MacLeod had built everybody up into a frenzy ahead of Argentina. We fancied ourselves that day. The amount of [supporters] reflected that, because they don't like going to Wembley to see their team getting beaten, which had happened a lot. That was the biggest away support I've seen in my life and they thought something special was going to happen that day.

Dalglish scored again after the interval, and Scotland were essentially comfortable in their lead. McQueen conceded a late spot-kick - "It was never a penalty," he growled - which Mick Channon converted, but the visitors were not to be denied their moment. The game itself was enough to make a lasting impression, but the unbridled intensity of the away support that day turned it into an iconic moment.

Scotland fans spilled on to the pitch afterwards, cutting most of it up for souvenirs, before some mounted the goalposts, inevitably breaking them in the process. If the image was of a kind of unrestrained yet dark high spirits, it represented the depth of emotion that the fixture was capable of rousing. The vivid black-and-white pictures, and the reminiscing, turned it into an iconic moment.

"We never got to pick up the trophy that day and do a lap of honour with it," McQueen said. "We were down the tunnel, which was massive at Wembley, 80 yards long, you used to get buses up and down it. We could see it on the television monitors around the dressing room, all the Scottish fans and the bedlam. It's the biggest support Scotland have ever taken to England. Everybody coming on to the pitch afterwards, digging it up and snapping the crossbar, has gone down as one of the best remembered games at Wembley. There must have been about 300,000 there that day given the number who have come up to me over the years to talk about it."

On previous occasions, McQueen had returned to Scotland after the game, in the hope of celebrating a victory back home. Since that had always turned out to be forlorn, he chose this time to return to the team hotel and sleep. When he awoke at 11pm, he and his wife went for a walk, and ended up in the one pub they found that was open. "It was rammed full of Scotland fans," he said. "We couldn't stay for long, because they were all going mental."

The grit of that team, and the guile it was also capable of, was typical of a generation that delivered more than one world-class footballer. The seam of talent has dwindled, so that McQueen's achievement continues to resonate. It always will, because of the potency of the occasion, but he senses fixtures between England and Scotland have lost their edge now they are no longer so frequent.

"It's a glorified friendly and a ridiculous time to have an international match, the midweek before the season starts in England," he said of tonight's game at Wembley. "I don't think you'll ever recapture what the home internationals were like. You might get a World Cup fixture that would catch the public's imagination, although it's still a big game for the Scottish players, to go to Wembley. We're on our knees as a national team, we have been for years, so it's a great chance to restore some pride. It will be a long, hard slog for Gordon to get the team right, but we're still capable of getting a result at Wembley. England are very average."