The return of hope is a great result for all of us

OH, WASN’T it glorious? Wasn’t it just absolutely‘ throw your hands in the air and do a little boogie’ incredible? When Scotland beat Serbia on penalties on Thursday night to qualify for Euro 2020, the first time we’ve made it to a major football tournament in 22 years, it felt as though a light had been switched on. We did it. We really did it.

Across the country, startled family pets looked on as their owners leapt from their sofas and shouted themselves hoarse. Texts, phone calls and endless digital Saltires and celebratory emojis flew between friends and family. I dare say a few tears were shed. They certainly were in this house.

Plans for matches at Hampden and cries of ‘see you at Wembley in June’ to the English are already being made.

Team members such as goal scorer Ryan Christie, centre forward Lyndon Dykes (who despite being born in Australia sounds like he was named after a train station in Fife) and goalkeeper David Marshall were, at a stroke, made national heroes.

And why? Because they have given us hope. Good old hope. Something which has been in desperately short supply in this long, difficult year.

It is hard to be hopeful when the future is less than assured, almost impossible to feel positive when there is nothing to look forward to. Instead, we have been floundering around in the dark, uncertain, worried and at times, utterly lost.

And yet in the space of a week, it is as though the clouds have parted and the sun has come out. News of a vaccine, and soon, brought real and genuine promise that this interminable cycle of lockdowns and misery will one day be over, possibly even soon.

There was hope, too, across the pond, where millions of Americans celebrated the downfall of President Trump and, after a year where the country has been devastated by Covid19 and endless rioting, started to look to a calmer, saner future.

I daresay there will also be those celebrating the departure of Dominic Cummings from Number 10, who is presumably leaving to spend more time with his family at Barnard Castle, and feeling hopeful about what it might mean for the direction of the Government in 2021.

We in Scotland know an awful lot about the agony and ecstasy of hope. Let’s face it, you need an awful lot of hope to be a Scotland supporter. I am not usually a fan of Scottish exceptional ism, but when it comes to getting into major world football tournaments, we really are exceptional. Exceptionally bad, that is.

A whole generation, including the entire current Scotland team, have barely known a time when Scotland qualified for the Euros or the World Cup. They have been raised on an endless diet of misery, disappointment and the effort of trying to drum up the enthusiasm to support England or Ireland instead. To them, this moment must seem almost unbelievable.

It is sobering to think that even Sir Andy Murray, who has almost singlehandedly carried Scotland’s sporting hopes for the past decade, was only 11 years old the last time we played in a major tournament.

BUT it’s not just the young who have suffered. I remember calling my late father a few years back to commiserate after yet another ‘snatching defeat from the jaws of victory’ game, only to hear him say he didn’t know if he could take any more.

‘I’ve been going through this for over 60 years, Emma,’ he said, with a world weariness only Scots of a certain age will understand. And yet he, too, would have been jumping for joy on Thursday night, all anger and frustration forgotten, the taste of victory made all the sweeter by the years of drought in between.

And so it is important for us to remember this moment, this feeling. To savour it, enjoy it, and call it to mind as we start the long road to 2021 and a vaccine, and begin to imagine a world where we have beaten Covid.

Because without that glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, we are all sunk. It is, when all is said and done, what keeps us going.

There will be hard days ahead. The wrangle over who will get the vaccine and when, whether or not it will be made privately available, whether, in fact, it really is effective enough.

There will be more lockdowns, additional restrictions, further economic damage and months of distancing still to endure. We are not out of the woods yet, and this is far from over.

But, today, there is hope. And for now, that is enough.