2 months ago
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At the end, Grant Hanley walked around in circles near the halfway line, like a man coming home from the pub with a few gallons on board.
A touch bewildered, a trifle unsteady on his feet. Eventually, his mates reached him and took him away, to his own personal purgatory, no doubt.
Facing the great Robert Lewandowski was an Everestian feat for a Scotland team that ships so many goals but, his penalty apart, Lewandowski was quiet and contained. He was not the unplayable one on the night.
The unplayable one wasn’t so much a person as a thing - it was Scotland’s ruthless capacity for self-sabotage.
They couldn’t live with their own clinical ability to load the gun and fire the contents of the barrel into their own feet. Scotland’s own errors did far more damage than Lewandowski ever threatened to do.
An opener from Poland that had its origins in Scotland losing possession and Angus Gunn not doing nearly enough to keep out a shot that was launched from about a quarter of a mile away.
A second from the penalty spot after the otherwise-admirable Anthony Ralston got himself in a bad spot and then made a bad decision.
Scotland had been decent and were 2-0 down. A new kind of torture.
The Hanley moment happened almost in slow motion, but of course, it needed the preamble of a rousing Scotland comeback to set the scene for its full horror.
The longer this game went on, the harder Scotland chased, the more Steve Clarke transformed himself from an anxious pensioner playing the penny slot machines with caution to a fearless footballing version of the great Amarillo Slim holding court at the poker table in Vegas, attacking with abandon, throwing negativity to the wind.
Clarke started with the same old characters. He then launched an array of creative players into the fray - a couple of debutants in Ryan Gauld and Ben Doak and an international rookie in Lewis Morgan.
In the parlance of the casino, at 2-2, Clarke was going all-in on victory having looked like a beaten docket at 2-0.
His team was hard-running and convincing, looking to all the world like they were going to complete an act of escapology with a winner.
Doak is still a teenager and hasn’t played a competitive game since last December, but he was a buzz bomb on the right.
Quite how the kid could go from no serious football in an age to having an influence in the maelstrom of a desperate Hampden was remarkable.
As for Gauld, he waited 10 long years for this. A decade of snubs, a career full of rejection from a succession of Scotland managers. He had a big impact, too.
Scott McTominay was denied a goal in the first half, but he powered on in his role as Scotland’s box-crasher. When Billy Gilmour made it 2-1, the Napoli midfielder made it 2-2 with a little help from Doak and the overlapping Ralston.
It was exhilarating and, with Lewandowski now substituted, there was nothing to fear from the visitors.
McTominay was outstanding, galloping forward into Poland’s heart. Hampden was as alive as it has been since the good old days when Scotland went thrusting their way through their Euros qualifying group.
A point would have been a reasonable return, but in the dizziness of those moments at 2-2, three points looked more likely. And then Poland went on the attack.
You could see it happening, Hanley moving towards Nicola Zalewski like a car sliding in the snow, its driver desperate to avoid another vehicle but unable to help himself.
Hanley had no need to make a tackle, no need to do it with his wrong foot, no need to clatter into Zalewski, who was going nowhere at the time.
There was no danger until the Norwich City defender decided to inject peril into a passive moment. Why? He won’t know.
Had you asked Hanley his name he might have needed to phone a friend. Naturally, Zalewski scored. Gunn came close, but he rarely comes close enough.
All of Scotland’s good work was undone and the inquest began in the aftermath.
One win in 13 now, which was a horrible thing against Gibraltar. Buckets of goals conceded. Countless examples of Scotland being their own worst enemy.
People are having to scrap the bottom of the barrel of optimism right now. There’s not a whole lot left down there.
This was their most winnable game in their Nations League group. Now comes the hardest, away to Portugal in Lisbon on Sunday. It’s only the 900-goal Cristiano Ronaldo awaiting them. What could possibly go wrong?
The only thing that Clarke can do is talk up the positives, of which there were a few.
Some new players who looked promising, a fightback that showed character, a return to form for McTominay and other key men who were posted missing in Germany. And two goals.
There’s no getting away from the other stuff, though. This group of players took some major psychological hits in Germany and, alas, the hits are still coming.
New competition and a new kind of calamity for the Scotland head coach and his shaken players to get their heads around.
What did you make of Scotland's performance? Were there signs of encouragement or just more of the same after the Euros disappointment?
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