For the second time in a week, I’m welling up. This time in a cafe on Northcote High Street in Melbourne at 9am. I punched the air when Kieran Tierney curled that one in. But Kenny McLean. From the halfway line. As the ball sails over Kasper Schmeichel my hands involuntarily shoot to the sky. What a moment. The commentary is amazing. Before long I’m watching it on a loop. The unwritten rule of not talking over each other goes out of the window. In fact it’s better. You want the comms to feel like you feel.
On BBC Scotland, Liam McLeod, Steven Thompson and James McFadden absolutely nail it. McLeod: “They’ve given it away.” Thompson: “SHOOT SHOOT.” McLeod: “He’s gonna shoot.” (McFadden is grinning wildly.) Thompson: “OH HE’S DONE HIM, HE’S DONE HIM, HE’S DONE HIM.” McLeod: “HAS THAT GONE IN? OOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOO THAT’S UNBELIEVABLE …” The fixed camera set on Thompson and McFadden is wonderous. Two grown men jumping up and down in unison like 10-year-old boys. They are just so happy.
We all know that social media is a terrible doomed place, but perhaps it’s all worth it for these moments: an avalanche of limbs, joyous videos from pubs and more pubs and airports and living rooms and badly angled iPhones in the stadium. There’s an angle from behind the goal where you see each Scotland player realise one by one that the ball is going in.
Scotland’s Kenny McLean takes aim from the halfway line. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA
Someone posts the BBC Radio Scotland commentary – even without the pictures, in fact especially without the pictures, it is untouchable. Alasdair Lamont and Michael Stewart deliver a magical 40 seconds.
Lamont: “Scotland just need to hold out for a few more seconds. My voice just needs to hold out for a few more seconds. As Hjulmand has it, he’s surrounded, he pokes the ball back.” Stewart: “He’s go’ it.” Lamont: “Surely now Scotland will hold on to possession. It’s McLean, he’s looking to go for [now falsetto] GOAL FROM THE HALFWAY LINE … HE’S CHIPPED SCHMEICHEL, OOOOOOOOaaaaaOOOOaaaOOOOOHAHAHAHAHAHA GLORIOUS! GLORIOUS! KENNY MCLEAN FROM THE [now full soprano] HALFWAY LINE. OOOOOAAAAAA SCOTLAND FOUR DENMARK TWO. WE ARE RETURNING TO THE WORLD CUP. WHAT. A. NIGHT.”
It takes me back to standing in the centre circle on a football pitch waiting for an ambulance at a university old boys match in 2001. Mark O’Donoghue – an excellent (but soft for a northerner) centre-mid – has hurt his ankle. England are 2-1 down to Greece. An era before smartphones. We are crowded around a wireless. Cue Alan Green: “Beckham to take it, 25 yards out.” Co-comms [agonising pained laugh]: “OHhhh.” Green: “Captain Beckham waits, Dick Jol’s happy. Beckham comes forward, right-footed, UP OVER THE WALL AND INTO THE NET. DAVID BECKHAM HAS DONE IT”.
Back to my laptop. Copa 90 post a wonderful video from a pub. You can’t see the screen. But you hear the moment that McLean gets the ball. A surge of joy and relief that Scotland have it. One voice: “GO ON KENNY.” Another: “TAKE IT TO THE FUCKING CORNER.” Another, pointing at the corner, louder: “WHAT YE DOIN?” – right as McLean shoots. The timing is perfect. The pub goes wild.
Three days earlier, I spent a day consuming as much Troy Parrott as is humanly possible. A man I had spent precisely no minutes considering until last week, and now I’m searching out everything ever said by his extended family.
From the moment Caoimhín Kelleher collects the ball to the full-time whistle, the whole four minutes on RTÉ is mesmerising. Darragh Maloney and Ray Houghton.
“One last throw of the dice, it’s all on this from Caoimhín Kelleher … Scales is up after it, Scales wins the header, there’s a CHANCE …” (Houghton: “YeeEEEEESSSS” – voice cracks.) “… OOOH AND THERE’S THE GOAL. THERE’S THE GOAL …” (Houghton: “GET IN.”) “… THAT’S TROY PARROTT. THAT IS UNBELIEVABLE. HE’S SCORED A HAT-TRICK. AND RIGHT AT THE DEATH IRELAND HAVE DONE IT. I’VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT.”
Troy Parrott celebrates his late winner in Budapest. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images
To Dublin airport: a man in a cream jacket losing his mind and keeping hold of his wheely bag. Kelleher later posts an Instagram story with that moment (the Waterboys’ Whole of the Moon playing in the background), sprinting off and kneesliding halfway across the pitch on his own.
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Back to the ground. There’s a wonderful moment where Houghton doesn’t want to see a replay. “Just make sure this is not offside …” “Ray, look at it again …” “I don’t want to … he’s not. Ah he’s not …”
If anything full-time is even better. Maloney: “Szoboszlai delivers the ball in, Caoimhín Kelleher catches it.” Houghton: “YESSSSSS.” Maloney: “Kelleher’s got it. The referee has to blow.” Houghton: “That’s got to be it. COME ON.” Maloney: “HE HAS TO FINISH IT NOW. The five minutes, well that was two minutes ago. Here we go, Kelleher just launch it down the field.” Houghton: “Take your time and just hit the channels …” Maloney: “THERE IT IS, IT’S OVER, IT’S OVER …”
Back to Hampden, and the Andy Robertson interview breaks me. How special to be able to articulate those feelings about Diogo Jota and simultaneous joy and grief as you step off the pitch.
All those cliches are true: these players are human beings, football bloody hell, of all the unimportant things it’s the most important. And so on and so on. When you work in the game it is easy to get cynical. There’s lots to be cynical about. But then there’s the pure unbridled joy that this thing gives us.
Deep down we know it’s ridiculous to be so overcome by a Scottish man you don’t know in a blue shirt kicking a ball 50 yards over the head of a Danish man you don’t know into a netted rectangle. Billions of years of evolution and it’s the grazed studs of an Irishman in Budapest that move you, Ray Houghton and a man in Dublin airport, perhaps more than anything else. I feel so fortunate to have fallen in love with this game.
