Often in life, you can do things 99% right, but the 1% gets you.
Aberdeen’s powers of concentration and willingness to put their bodies in the firing line made it a suffocating afternoon for their opponents’ biggest dangers.
Not once during the first 75 minutes did any manage to find a clear avenue to create so much as a half-chance on the Dons’ goal from open play.
Then came the one fateful moment.
Dante Polvara lost on an all-in gamble on the ball going infield, Nicky Devlin could not summon one more sprint to close down the space, and Borna Barisic had all the time he wished to drop the decisive grenade into Aberdeen’s box and blow their chances sky high.
But, while clearly it is disappointing to miss out on a major trophy by a single-goal defeat in the final, there is a sense in which all were aware that victory here would cover a multitude of sins.
Results this season suggest that this side is regularly capable of such resilient shifts when winning is not necessarily expected, but struggles terribly at both ends of the pitch on days when it is.
It is perhaps difficult to mould essentially a whole new team whilst simultaneously competing in two environments where it is an underdog and a big fish respectively, but full focus must now turn to resolving that problem. Much less than 99% has been done right on that score.
When one of its own managers astonishingly – if not without foundation – describes Scottish football as rubbish, there is no excuse for a team which can compete like this to be so far down the heap.
It is essential that Aberdeen now avoid being among the masses of post-Christmas detritus carried off by the scaffy towards the bottom six dump.
