CROCODILE DUMFRIES RIPS UP THESCRIPT
Aussie-born hero delivers fairytale ending
FEELING a little too good about life? In need of being brought back down to earth with a bump just to remember what it feels like to be Scottish?
A short break in the Faroe Islands will do the trick. It almost always does.
Come to think of it, where better than the land that time forgot for those looking to shake off the kind of unfamiliarity which visited Hampden on Saturday night when, for once, it felt as if our little nation was on top of the world?
Well, this was as close to rock bottom as Steve Clarke could possibly have envisaged.
A little more than 85 minutes of absolute agony combined with the constant, nagging fear that, at any given point, it might become even more ignominious than it was already.
Just as well then for Crocodile Dumfries – the Aussie-born striker who, by an accident of birthright, doesn’t appear to realise yet how Scotland’s script is meant to go.
By popping up with a fourth goal in four successive Group F matches and just in the nick of time, Lyndon Dykes allowed Clarke and his players to get the hell out of Dodge without any serious damage being done, never mind the need for any prolonged period of navel-gazing.
And, let’s face it, we’ve all been there before.
Once again Dykes was denied the chance to milk his big moment as his winner went to VAR but the records will show the QPR striker came good just when it mattered most of all and his gargantuan contribution looks like carrying Scotland all the way into the play-offs for Qatar 2022.
But that was only half the story on a night when the manager toyed with the idea of tossing away so much of the goodwill which had been stacked up by three straight wins.
It almost defied belief that Clarke left Nathan Patterson and Kevin Nisbet on the bench until the dying embers of this match when one if not both of these the young guns, along with Celtic skipper Callum McGregor, should have been sent for at half-time, so substandard had been Scotland’s opening 45 minutes.
That Patterson needed only three minutes on the pitch to come up with the killer cross, after replacing the ineffective Ryan Fraser, did little to make it feel as if Clarke had pulled a rabbit out of the hat with his late substitutions.
Instead, it begged an obvious question – why on earth did the manager stubbornly wait so long before making the crucial changes which eventually got him out of jail?
With Craig Gordon forced into a superb double save to keep the Faroes out midway through the first period, this was quickly becoming to feel like a horrible miscalculation.
It was almost as if the tweaks made to the team had thrown them off kilter.
With Fraser making next to no impact on the right, Scott McTominay struggling to impose himself in the centre of the pitch and Ryan Christie and Dykes detached and on different pages up top, this was a truly horrible first-half display.
Clarke, then, had even more big decisions to make at the break. Unlike at the weekend, it was glaringly obvious that his selection was askew. It was crying out for changes – and the reintroduction of McGregor’s composure and Patterson’s energy and drive in particular.
That the manager opted instead to do nothing merely compounded Scotland’s problems.
Fraser continued to take the easy options, passing the buck when he ought to have been passing his opponents, McTominay looked no more comfortable or creative in the middle of the pitch and Dykes continued to be starved of any sort of decent service.
And, all the while, Scotland’s need for something completely different was becoming and more and more dire. There was a fleeting flash of hope when the ball dropped to Billy Gilmour’s right boot just after the hour but his shot skidded fizzed wide.
Eventually, after an age, Clarke turned to his bench and told McGregor to get stripped – sending the Celtic skipper on for Jack Hendry and moving McTominay back into his bespoke defensive duties.
And, with only eight minutes left, he finally told Patterson to make the difference down Scotland’s right.
It was a decision which took him way too long. But it worked. And for that, we can all be thankful.
This is what it’s like to be Scotland.