There isn’t much positive to be said for pneumonia. But as Scotland’s number nine wrestled both match and group completely into their control, while Norway’s watched helplessly from the bench, it might earn an honourable mention.
If pushed, Lyndon Dykes would concede that he’d swap his interrupted season for the all-conquering one of Erling Haaland.
But at its end, while Haaland’s legs were up resting, it was Dykes’ – a thousand fewer minutes in them – still pumping in pursuit of a ball meandering just beyond the redemption of his fatigued opponents.
That he would get there barely even looked an option, until he did.
Dykes’ lungs would have earned the roar of vindication they expelled, even if only on the basis of their thankless and fruitless exertions of the preceding 86 minutes.
That they were able to power his body to those lengths so soon after their brush with such a debilitating condition – boy did that ever pick on the wrong guy – is heroism commensurate with the Tartan Army history written in that moment, and the one he teed up immediately after.
At the highest levels of sporting competition the difference is often made by the ability to deliver perfect technique when emotions are running hottest, and there did the mantle fall upon the shoulders of Kenny McLean.
The substitute’s inch-perfect finish, curved around a flailing glove and back inside the post, was the single finest piece of football produced in a game which hardly deserved its epic ending.
McLean’s picture-book face of astonishment was a measure of surprise not, it is to be hoped, in his own routinely underestimated talent, but that events would decide to turn so spectacularly in favour of the downtrodden Scottish sporting nation.
Perhaps they had no choice. This extraordinary team is simply seizing its destiny.
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