Awful Aberdeen simply not on ball at national stadium

And so, it turns out, Aberdeen’s shootout success at Kilmarnock was not a destiny-changing rearguard action, but merely a belligerent final salvo. The damage sustained in the campaign was already too great to be overcome.

There was always a concern that the simultaneous suspension of three such key players as Shay Logan, Graeme Shinnie and Kenny McLean – who had missed only 10 games between them since becoming team-mates three years ago – would give Derek McInnes an unachievable repair job, and it was no coincidence that their underseasoned replacements played starring roles in the chaotic episodes which took the semi beyond Aberdeen’s reach.

Dominic Ball will feel rightly aggrieved that, in a match overseen by no fewer than five officials, none spotted the fairly obvious handball by Richard Tait in the seconds before the opening goal. But to give up the penalty-box pursuit of the Motherwell captain in favour of yelling at the referee was an egregious error of judgment which ought to have been coached out of him in his very first day of organised football training.

Ball’s failure to play to the whistle was a genuinely astounding aberration on such a huge occasion, and shellshocked an already uncertain Aberdeen defence. The Dons never had a chance to recover, for in their stupor they disastrously conceded again, and a tie which had been well in hand was irredeemably lost in the blink of an eye.

It is unfortunate that the scrap for Premiership points has been so intense that, despite knowing for a month that his second-stringers would be needed at Hampden, McInnes did not have the leeway to give them adequate minutes in preparation. Unusually candid postmatch, McInnes as good as admitted that the players he had signed as deputies were substandard, but it was only to confirm with words the distrust already shown in the action of their previous omission.

Though unsaid, it was accepted that this was a possible outcome. Sadly, it appeared to have crossed the Dons’ minds too.