Rogic settles classic final in a flash
● Lightning bolt accompanies Aussie’s dramatic late goal ● Treble for Celtic, despair for Dons in Hampden thriller
This, make no mistake, will go down as a modern classic. It was different to last year’s intoxicating final in that it was not quite so helter-skelter. Yet the match was every bit as memorable, reaching a crescendo at the same end and in the same corner.
Seismic though it was, there was no celestial event to greet Hibs skipper David Gray’s winner 12 months ago like there was to accompany Tom Rogic as he slalomed down the right beneath the thundery sky.
A vivid, silent flash of lightning lit the way for someone dubbed “the magic man” by manager Brendan Rodgers.
“If someone has the picture, it would be priceless,” remarked Celtic goalkeeper Craig Gordon later, rightly identifying this as a moment in time, one perhaps made all the more special by being preserved only in memory.
Zig-zagging across the sky towards the east of their city, the lightning bolt was actually hidden from view for the majority of Celtic fans housed in the east end of the ground.
But they were well placed to see the flicker of genius that won the final-witheverything. Rogic scored what he described as a “five-a-side goal” in front of them.
Normally a match report requires a couple of pages’ worth of notes, tops. By the time the last entry was scribbled down on Saturday – “Taylor nods down, Rooney just can’t reach it” – a fourth page had been required. Remarkably, though Celtic scored so late, Aberdeen were given the opportunity to cure the neutral’s deflation at being robbed of another 30 minutes of this exhilarating fare when Craig Gordon clutched the ball to deny Adam Rooney’s desperate lunge in the game’s final act of note.
Including friendlies, this was the 67th match – of course it was – of Celtic’s seemingly blessed season.
The only surprise is that their winner didn’t arrive in the 67th minute(patrickrobertsdidhit the post slightly earlier). Nothing was going to get in the way of their bid to mark the 50th anniversary of Lisbon with an unbeaten treble, not even an Aberdeen performance that was everything it had not been when the teams last clashed at Hampden in November.
As Derek Mcinnes later mentioned, this had the feel of two top teams slugging it out from the very beginning. The atmosphere crackled and when goals were traded within a couple of minutes of each other in the opening spell, it was clear the good feelings about the match were justified.
The best side in the country were playing the second best. But this being a cup final, the status of the teams, and the fact Celtic had won five out of five meetings prior to kick-off, threatened to matter not a jot.
Anyone with no knowledge of how the league finished might well have identified Aberdeen as the runaway champions from the evidence of the first-half.
Celtic could not get into their stride. Aberdeen, meanwhile, immediately got into theirs. They’d already threatened from a couple of corners by the time Jonny Hayes, pictured left, ran off the dawdling Leigh Griffiths to gain powerful left-footed connection to Niall Mcginn’s corner kick.
Although Celtic equalised with yet another quality strike from Stuart Armstrong just under two minutes later, Aberdeen quickly trashed any notion they’d surrendered the momentum.
Back they came, perhaps more strongly than before, their bite lent further spike by some recklessness, perhaps even malice, on the part of Jayden Stockley, whose clash with Kieran Tierney as they jostled at a throw-in left the youngster with a broken jaw.
The game was stopped for five minutes. Time enough just about to get everyone’s breath back. Tierney, sadly, departed, replaced by Rogic. No one quite knew the extent of influence he would wield until much, much later. But by early in the second-half, Rogic was offering fleeting hints of his potential danger and his capability to become a match winner.
Hence the substitution some interpreted as being overly negative, as Mcginn made way for Anthony O’connor.