Image source, Getty Images
Euro 2024, Group A: Scotland v Hungary
Venue: MHPArena, Stuttgart Date: Sunday, 23 June Kick-off: 20:00 GMT
Coverage: Watch on BBC One, listen on BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Radio Scotland, live text commentary on BBC Sport website.
Imagine you are Anthony Ralston. You have started six league games for Celtic all season and, because a plague has descended on others, suddenly you’re first choice for Scotland at Euro 2024.
You’ve been an unused substitute for your club in 12 consecutive Champions League matches and haven’t played any European football in two years and four months.
And now, for your country, you’re seeing the might of Florian Wirtz of Bayer Leverkusen and Jamal Musiala of Bayern Munich bearing down on you on the biggest night of your football life.
You’ve been pilloried for your performance. You are at the epicentre of the flak in the wake of the 5-1 defeat by Germany. People want Ross McCrorie to replace you. Or James Forrest. Or Scott McTominay. Or…
Scotland’s training camp might be a cocoon near the Austrian border, but they’re not completely cut off from comment from the outside world. Stuff gets through.
Before Aaron Hickey and Nathan Patterson got injured, nobody could have imagined that one of the most talked-about Scottish players in Germany would be the Celtic man.
Dan Ndoye, an important player for Bologna in their successful bid for a spot in the Champions League, and the experienced Ruben Vargas are now coming for you.
So, under pressure, you gift a pass to Xherdan Shaqiri and he wallops one into the top corner.
Blick, the Swiss German-language daily newspaper, thanks you for your service. “Defender Ralston plays a pass into the centre that would have earned the boot from even a junior team,” it reports.
‘How could you not root for Ralston?’
The question is asked again. Imagine you are Anthony Ralston? So few games, so little confidence, such a cauldron you’re in. Everybody with eyes on you. Wingers salivating at the mouth in your presence.
So this is where it turns, this incredible one-man drama.
Ralston is one of only four Scotland outfield players who has played every minute in Germany. He ranks second only to McTominay in terms of distance covered on the pitch.
He looked to be cramping up just after the hour mark in Cologne, but in the 91st minute, he delivered a cross into the Swiss box and, in the 94th minute, he delivered another.
As much as his football ability was tested on Wednesday, Ralston’s nerve was tested even more.
Those minutes after the goal must have been a lonely time, even though his team-mates rallied around him superbly.
“Not many people would come back from that,” said his captain, Andy Robertson. “It was a difficult one for him, but, second half, he was different class.”
That might be stretching it, but you know where Robertson is coming from. Ralston dug in. He refused to capitulate.
He got himself high up the pitch when he could and defended pretty well in the main. He fronted up.
This is a player whose only other starts this season outside of international football have come against Ross County (twice), Kilmarnock (twice), St Mirren (twice), Aberdeen and Motherwell.
He has now started three games in a row (Finland, Germany and Switzerland) for the first time since August.
How could you not root for Ralston, a footballer who is working extraordinarily hard to survive against more talented players in an unforgiving setting – and where his every error is examined and amplified?
In a sense, he’s Scotland’s fighting spirit in microcosm. There isn’t a single member of this squad who has been tested, psychologically, in the way Ralston has.
‘Underdog with character and heart’
“A big character” was how his club captain, Callum McGregor, described Ralston.
“He hasn’t played a huge amount of football and, to get thrown into that top level, he deals with it really well,” McGregor said. “He’s such an honest boy.”
McGregor spoke about how Ralston’s error could happen to anybody and sometimes you get away with them and sometimes a guy takes advantage and produces something from another planet, as Shaqiri did.
“To come back and show that level of performance and calmness for a young player speaks volumes,” McGregor said.
Ralston is 25, so he’s not all that young in football years, but in time spent in the rarefied air, he now exists in, he’s still a mere child.
His team-mates went to him on the full-time whistle in Cologne to comfort him for his mistake, no doubt, but also to show their regard for him for staying in the fight.
Ralston doesn’t have the international class of many on show here in Germany. Every game is a grind.
He knows that he doesn’t just have a target on his back. He has one on his front. He has one square between his eyes.
But he’s got character and he’s got heart and those qualities have taken him a long way in his career. He’s an underdog who might have won over a few doubters in what he did following the calamity of that misplaced pass.
And, if he hasn’t, well, that doesn’t seem to bother him all that much. His manager has backed him, his team-mates are with him and he’ll surely be back out there again when Scotland play Hungary on Sunday.
Another enormous night in the remarkable recent story of a lesser-spotted full-back who has become the focus of so much attention.