Bell of a time for club and country

● Earning cult status after declaring himself Mayor of Norwich during the club’s Championship celebrations and his first goal for Scotland to much lesser acclaim... the last few months have been a rollercoaster ride for former Don Kenny Mclean

Wh e n i t c o m e s t o compiling a list of career highlights, w i n n i n g p r o m o - tion to the Premier League with Norwich City and scoring his first goal for S cotland would both feature prominently for Kenny Mclean.

Yet b oth of those notable achieve - ments have prompted ver y different emotions and degrees of celebration for the 27-year-old midfielder over the past few months.

As a member of his club’s Championship-winning squad, Mclean earned cult status among their supporters during alcohol-fuelled title celebrations at City Hall when he declared himself Mayor of Norwich.

The jubilation and good humour of that occasion were in sharp contrast to the aftermath of Mclean’s maiden goal for his country which set them on their way to a 2- 0 win in San Marino back in March.

It earned S cotland their first three points of the Euro 2020 qualifying campaign but their display did not spare them from hearing the displeasure of a Scotland support still reeling from the humiliating 3-0 defeat in Kazakhstan a few days earlier, which would ulti

mately cost Alex Mcleish his job as manager.

Mclean is among those now hop - ing to earn the trust of new boss Steve Clarke, whose tenure begins with Saturday night’s Group I match against Cy p r u s a t H a m p d e n . T h e f o r m e r St Mirren and Aberdeen player is fit and focused on the task at hand after admitting he made the most of the opportunity to party in the wake of Norwich’s return to the top flight of English football after a three-year absence.

“That was carnage and a mad few d ays ,” s a i d Mc L e a n a s h e r e c a l l e d the events which saw his seizure of t h e mayo r a l h a t o n t h e b a l c o ny a t Norwich’s civic HQ go viral.

“The celebrations got the better of me a wee bit but it was good. We deserved to enjoy ourselves for a few days and I maybe enjoyed it more than anybody else!

“Just before the open-top bus parade around the city, we were in the town hall and out on the balcony and the mayor was with us. His hat lo oked appealing. I stuck it on, took his bell and ended up addressing the crowd. I had a few drinks in me and that didn’t help.

“The mayor was tweeting me asking for his hat back because I kept it for the whole night. I grabbed it without his permission but, to be fair, he played along with it.

“The whole Mayor of Norwich thing was a great laugh but they have taken the title off me since then – I got a tweet when I was on holiday in Dubai last week, telling me that a new Mayor has been elected!

“Listen, it was a special day that everyone will remember. I just happened to top it off with a nice hat!”.

With his domestic campaign finishing five weeks ago, Mclean has been

on how his seizure of the Mayor of Norwich’s hat and bell during the East Anglian club’s Championship-winning celebrations went viral.