By Chick Young BBC Scotland football correspondent

The first Friday of December is the first day of the rest of our football lives.

In Frankfurt, Germany, there will be the draw for the qualifying groups of the 2006 World Cup.

It's in the years to those finals that Berti Vogts and his team must show of what they are made.

We're deflated, punctured, drained, maybe even mortified.

But, when the dust settles after the massacre in the Amsterdam ArenA, we must yet see that there is hope.

Any other way is to surrender to hopeless embarrassment.

Scotland were embarrassed by the size of defeat by the Dutch

How we suffered in the Netherlands. For 90 agonising minutes, we began to realise that nothing has changed after all - that we're still the mugs of the beautiful game, that the supporters in the Tartan Army are our only world class performers.

"We'll support you up to four" was the cry as the electronic scoreboard clicked up showing no mercy.

Over the years, I have been in attendance at some sickening showings, where embarrassment seemed thick in the air for those born in our little land.

I can remember, for example, a 5-1 dismantling by England at Wembley in the 70s and I was mentally scarred as a child listening to the 9-3 game from London 42 years ago.

But Amsterdam was a step beyond even that.

How could it go so wrong after going so right just four days earlier?

Previously in this column, I forecast that Scotland were capable of winning in Glasgow, but that, in reality, we had no chance of progressing to the Euro 2004 finals.

But, not in my darkest moments, did I ever believe that our organised and still-talented young team would undergo such a whipping.

Scotland can take heart from their displays before Amsterdam

It was a mismatch and I can still see Berti Vogts sitting motionless on his bench while, just 20 feet away, Dick Advocaat had that look of smugness that Celtic fans must have hated in his several winning seasons at Ibrox.

But, in this, our darkest hour, we cannot give up hope.

Before the hell of Holland we will recall that we were building a side for which we had high hopes. With the likes of Fletcher and McFadden, the belief was back.

Maybe we should just pretend that Amsterdam never happened and the salvation is what lies ahead after that draw in Frankfurt, Berti's second campaign and the coming of age for his young team.

It was a horrible, horrible night, but the one comfort for me was that, if I screwed up my eyes and pretended I was on mind-altering substances, I could imagine that the Scotland players in white top and dark blue shorts were really English.

When I wake up in the morning, I will know that it's not true, but the nightmare will go away in the fullness of time.

Trust me and fast forward the calendar to 5 December.