Reality? Aye, Right!

Last night Scotland reminded the world that we do not qualify for tournaments, we survive them.

Somewhere between divine intervention, blind panic, and the national pastime of making simple things impossibly stressful, Scotland beat Denmark 4–2.

Somehow Scotland booked a place at a World Cup for the first time since 1998, taking a new generation into a different reality!

All they had to do was win.

So naturally, they scored a wonder overhead kick in the third minute, just to lure us into a false sense of comfort. Then they spent the next eighty-odd minutes proving once again that no team can snatch chaos from the jaws of death quite like Scotland.

Denmark equalised. Of course they did. Play offs looming. Blood pressure soaring. We were glued to the TV, unable to move. Denmark went down to ten men, which somehow made them look even better. Then Scotland poked in a second and for a brief moment it was 2-1.

Naturally, Denmark scored again and it was 2–2. Hampden and the whole nation groaned. Play offs back on the horizon. The clock hit injury time.

Then it happened. A wonder strike out of nowhere. 3–2.

Pandemonium. Absolute mayhem.

Seconds left, Denmark surged forward and looked dangerous again because Scotland do not believe in calm endings. The ball broke, and from the halfway line came a goal so absurd it felt like a glitch in reality. 4–2. Full time. The Nation collapsed in a joyful heap.

The commentator summed it up. “Nine forty-eight pm on Tuesday the eighteenth of November. We will never forget it.” Mainly because our nerves will never recover!

Scotland qualified the only way Scotland know how. The hard way. The torturous way!

And we would not have it any other way, would we?!

Is there is a lesson in all this?

Coaching Scotland must be the purest test of leadership on the planet. It is not about strategy or a philosophy. It is managing a squad of talented players who insist on performing every match like a Hollywood thriller where nobody knows the script until the last thirty seconds.

Leading this team means keeping belief alive when the rest of us are hiding behind the couch. It is about steadying the nerves of a nation that has none left.

It is about turning mayhem into magic.

So, after a night that broke the laws of logic and possibly physics too, only one question remains.

If Scotland can rewrite reality, what excuse do the rest of us have?