LIFE OF RYAN IS CHANGED FOREVER AS HE GETS ONE OVER ON HIS DAD
It’ll be nice to have this one over him. This is the best season the club has had
GIVEN he had barely started primary school the last time Super Caley went anything like as ballistic as this, Ryan Christie was entitled to his moment of wide-eyed bewilderment.
It was all so deliciously surreal. A club born from a merger just 21 years ago and hitherto most renowned for that famous victory at Celtic Park in 2000 now on the winner’s podium and bound for Europe.
If the crowning moment not only of the season but of the club’s short, enchanted history had the journeymen pros in John Hughes’ squad shaking their heads in disbelief, then spare a thought for those whose very lives have this journey.
For Christie, not only Invernessborn and bred but the son of a veritable club legend in his father Charlie, life will simply never be the same again.
The photos on the i nterior walls of the Caledonian Stadium commemorating the night his father helped to put the Glasgow giants to the sword 15 years back will always be dearly cherished, but a spot of re-arranging over the summer will now be required.
‘It is hard to put it into words,’ t he 20- year- old sighed. ‘ For everyone in the whole club and everyone in the city, it’s a huge achievement.
‘It’s just incredible. We knew at the start of the season we could do well, but to do what we have done this season is just unbelievable.’
That is surely beyond all dispute. Equally, the progress this fledgling club has made in seemingly the blink of an eye.
It is truly remarkable to consider that it was only four years after first beating Celtic in the Scottish Cup that Inverness initially joined the top tier of Scottish football.
They briefly lost that status in 2009 but returned the following year, made the top six in 2013 and repeated the trick last season.
If the progress chart had perhaps predicted great things this time round, then frankly few outwith the Highlands anticipated them.
To finish third this term would have been historic in itself. For the Scottish Cup to also be claimed sets the bar impossibly high for future generations.
For Christie junior, the family bragging r i ghts are now his personal property.
‘I am the one with the medal,’ he smiled. ‘It will be nice to have this one over him. Considering how young the club is, this is amazing. Since the Super Caley result over Celtic, it has been constant success.
‘But this is the best season the club has had. It is incredible how far it has come.’
All joking aside, no one would have appreciated or revelled in that fact more than the head of the Christie household — a man with the very spirit of the club coursing through his veins.
‘He left me to it on Friday night,’ Christie junior added. ‘But I had a quick word with him before the game. He told me not to be shy, to get on the ball and express myself.
‘I got a word with him at the end and he was delighted for me and wanted me to go and enjoy my night.
‘I was emotional ... just seeing people in the crowd saying: “Well done” and seeing what it meant to them.
‘It gets to you a wee bit. He probably won’t admit that he was emotional unless someone has snapped a picture of him with tears running down his cheeks.’
While there is no questioning who has been the biggest influence on the career to date of the Scotland Under-21 starlet, it has been under the tutelage of Hughes that he has developed from an exciting talent into a player of real substance.
Sometimes it is hard to reconcile Hughes the player — a typically no-nonsense Scottish centre-half — with the progressive, passing style he now preaches. But the fruits of his labours are seen in the emerging talents he hones.
‘His style of play is the biggest thing he has brought to the club,’ said young Christie.
‘He has come in from day one and has been relentless in getting us to play his way.
‘And, obviously, it has paid off this season with the Scottish Cup Final win.
‘Every day in training, he is on to us to keep passing the ball. It has got to the point where that is very rare in Scotland.
‘I am delighted with it because that i s the way I like to play football. Sometimes you think older players are stuck in their ways.’
It is not just young, homespun talents like Christie for whom such words are music to their ears.
When Greg Tansey, the experienced midfielder, was contemplating returning to the Highland club a year past in January, Hughes’ vision won him over in a matter of seconds.
‘I was at Stevenage and not really enjoying my football and not getting on with the staff there,’ he recalled of an unhappy 18-month separation.
‘Thankfully, I came back here. At the first meeting I had with the gaffer, he told me how he wanted us to play. Straight away, I thought: “This sounds for me”.
A HAPPY ending did seem somewhat remote , though, as a re-energised Falkirk pressed f or a winner following Carl Tremarco’s dismissal on Saturday
What unfolded though — Marley Watkins bounding 60 yards to set up James Vincent’s winner — typified the Highlanders’ indefatigability under t heir manager.
‘It was hard to get out,’ Tansey recalled. ‘ But the gaffer was screaming us on. He’s got great enthusiasm. If you are ever running low on gas, you look over to him and he’s either screaming at you or screaming at someone else to scream at you. You are always on your toes.’
For the foreseeable future though, they will all be floating on air.
Nick Ross, like Christie a local l ad made good, accepts that lifting a major trophy will always mean that l i ttle bit more to those who have witnessed the club evolve these past 21 years.
Yet, were it not f or t he connection between the city, the club and those who have travelled from afar to make the Caledonian Stadium their home, he feels none of what has transpired would have been possible.
‘I suppose it does feel extra special for the likes of myself but it is a special day for everyone,’ he said.
‘I think the person who will be feeling it most is James Vincent after getting the winning goal.
‘I saw a lot of faces in the crowd on Saturday as well and that was special.
‘ The whole buil d- up was amazing with the entire town getting behind us. The supporters were amazing and if we could get half, even a quarter of that, for every home game we would be delighted.’
It is to be hoped that many of those who donned red and blue scarves for the first time on Saturday now make a habit of it.
Their local club can scarcely do much more to entice them. Days like Saturday might not come along too often but, from humble beginnings, the Highlanders are now an established force in the Scottish game.
I ndeed, after claiming the Scottish Cup for the first time in their history, the tag of plucky underdogs might need reviewing.
‘It will be different certainly from now on,’ Ross admitted. ‘We are used to being the underdogs and that’s what spurs us on a lot of the time.
‘People like to write us off and at the start of the year we were getting tipped for relegation, which seems to happen all the time. Next year, teams will start noticing us now but, hopefully, we can build on this.
‘It is not going to be easy but we hope this is not going to be a one-off.
‘ There will be a few players moving on but we now have Europe next season and we have just won the Cup.
‘If that doesn’t motivate people to come here, I don’t know what will.’