Andy Robertson admits the Scotland squad joined the rest of the nation in a pit of despair for days after hitting a dead end on the road to Qatar.
It might have been the Jubilee weekend with street parties across the UK but the flags have been at half mast this side of the wall with the World Cup dream left in bits.
Robertson could have stuck to the Scotland campaign failure blueprint. We’ve seen enough over the past two decades to know the drill.
The bid gets nuked before players and managers say the same old stuff.
The poor fella wearing the armband is usually wheeled out to suggest the boys are disappointed but they’ll dust themselves down and go again, there’s hope for the future and this time next year we’ll be millionaires Rodney.
There’s been some of that but not from the skipper. Robertson doesn’t do empty platitudes. He does high expectations.
And when those are not met, there is no silver lining or crumbs of comfort to be had.
There are dark days of utter disappointment and the skipper insists it was OK to be down in the dumps for a few days.
Now comes the fightback.
Asked about moving on from last Wednesday’s Ukraine heartache, Robertson said: “Not on the night, that’s for sure.
“Let us be disappointed, let us be together and dwell on it – that’s absolutely fine.
“At least there has been time until the next game, which is sore. We wanted it to be a quick turnaround for the Wales game.
“But it wasn’t to be and now we have had this long wait for the Armenia game.
“I’ve no problem with the lads feeling hurt, feeling disappointed. After a couple of days, we are ready to go again.”
Unlike previous campaigns, when the nation has been promised jam tomorrow, this time there does seem more genuine cause to believe better times are ahead.
Scotland did reach the Euros, they did get to the World Cup play-offs, the squad is a good age and there are players who have shown they can do the business on this stage.
Steve Clarke’ s men went eight games unbeaten going into the play-off semi-final.
Although they didn’t turn up at Hampden in a 3-1 defeat, we should be careful with the babies and bath water.
There is a bigger picture, even if it’s hard to see it right now.
Robertson said: “There will come a time for that. Just now, that’s probably for you guys in the media to focus on, try to put a bit of perspective on it.
“But for us, we will do that in maybe the next couple of days.
“Just now, we have to be sore that we didn’t play our game plan as well as we should have done the other night.
“We didn’t play as well as we should have and what we prepared for.
“And when you do that, you are always disappointed. Our lads are disappointed. We have to pick them up but last week was not the night to do that.
“We were all sore – coaches, players – and we had to allow that.
“It’s pointless trying to fix it right away. We came back the next day, we got back on the training pitch and hopefully we are good to go for another Nations League.”
It has been a brutal few weeks for Robertson, with Liverpool losing out on the Premier League crown to Manchester City on the last day and then in the Champions League Final against Real Madrid in Paris.
Chuck in the Scotland woe and our main man could be forgiven for hiding under the duvet until next season.
That’s not his way and while he admits there are lessons to be learned, sometimes you have to tip the hat to your opponents.
The 28-year-old added: “We were highly motivated, highly determined. It’s highly emotional to get to a World Cup.
“It’s something that this country doesn’t do very often.
“We don’t have many play-offs and things like that, so we wanted to put in a performance but we didn’t.
“For their part, you’ll need to ask one of their players how emotional they were.
“With everything going on in their country, they put in a good performance to make their country proud. Sometimes you have to take your hats off to them. They played a really good game and caused us problems in areas where we were weak at that time.”
The thing that gnaws with Robertson is the fact Scotland didn’t do enough to harness the Hampden Roar.
He said: “We didn’t play to the levels that we played at in the last games at Hampden.
“We didn’t play to a level that the full crowd deserved.
“We didn’t really give them anything to shout about. We didn’t start the game well enough. We didn’t settle.
“They were keeping the ball. We couldn’t really get close to them.
“That was the way of it until probably the last 10-15 minutes when we threw the kitchen sink at it.
“We tried everything to get back into the game. Every Scotland fan, everyone watching that game, knew we could play a lot better.”
