Our night at the SUPERBOWL

How one dad made a spectacle of himself on Hampden's greatest occasion

- 

DAVID MCCARTHY and his two sons Sam and Jamie join the Tartan Army for a night to remember inside the bouncing Grand Old Lady of Mount Florida

MY SPECS ended up in the row in front, as mangled as Danish dreams, collateral damage from an explosion of joy rarely, if ever, seen at Hampden before.

There have been big days and nights in this draughty old bowl we call home. I was 10 when big Joe Jordan launched himself into folklore with the flying header to send Scotland to the 1974 World Cup. More than half a century later it is still remembered, still revered.

Well, on Tuesday night another Scot defied gravity by hovering in the air long enough to suspend belief before delivering the kind of moment that just isn't reserved for the likes of us.

Scotland are the perennial hard-luck story, are we not? But when Scott McTominay's right boot connected with Ben Gannon-Doak's cross from about the height of the floodlights, we dared to dream.

We? That'll be me, my two boys and my brother-in-law. Four Scots who lost all sense of time, space and self-consciousness in that split second between the ball leaving McTominay's boot and the realisation that it had finished in the Danish net behind Kasper Schmeichel.

It didn't matter because all around us, every tartan-clad man, woman and child had lost it as well. When we'd unlocked ourselves from each other's embrace, my Gregory's were still, somehow, sitting on my nose, if somewhat askew.

That was to change, but more of that later.

McTominay's goal was the culmination of a buildup that had grown to a crescendo throughout the day. My two, Sam, 18, and Jamie, 15, admitted that university and school were a write-off as Scotland-Denmark was all anyone was interested in.