It’s hard to know what exactly was the best story to come out of a week of pure gold from Scotland’s two World Cup games in Boston.
There’s the bloke Mike Morrison who clocked some boys from Kilmarnock moving into an Airbnb across the road from his house, took over a few cans, put on a barbecue and is now on the verge of becoming an official ambassador for the nation.
A kindly stranger called Helen McDonald got him a ticket for the Morocco game after picking up on his hospitality on social media and they arrived at the Gillette Stadium to a royal welcome from the New England Patriots, who had provided two NFL shirts with their names printed across the back and a written note expressing their joy at seeing how ‘nothing brings people together like sports’.
Morrison is now off on a sponsored trip to Miami for the Brazil game. Who knows what’s next for him? Sorting out the ferries crisis? Getting the NHS and education off their knees? Telling John Swinney just to extend his Stateside jolly hiding away from the mess back home because there’s a new First Minister in town? Him!
The Tartan Army have had the time of their lives following Scotland in Boston
Certainly, the Caledonian influence has created ripples in political circles over in Massachusetts. A few days of chanting about John McGinn, while slugging pints like they’re going out of fashion, and haggis and sheep lungs are suddenly back off the banned list, Glasgow is getting twinned with Boston and rules about being prohibited from drinking outside in the city are torn up and put in the trash.
In between all that, there’s been those yellow school buses transporting punters to the matches, thousands of dollars being raised for charity, traffic cones appearing on every statue ever built and so many Bostonians openly admitting that it has taken a ragtag collection of kilted-up boozebags to put fun and life back into the city and make the locals feel proud of themselves again.
Sure, some even want to keep us. The next social media story building momentum centres on a lady by the name of Lexi Cothran, who met a handful of wandering Scots in her home city of Nashville and has now embarked upon an epic search to find herself a Scottish husband.
Something for everyone, really. Even the most puerile of us, still chortling heartily over the owner of a Boston off-sales titled Jobi Liquors discovering precisely why his wee shop had become such a centre of attention.
It has all been a wonderful, essential diversion from the football and there will no doubt be much more to come in Miami. It focuses the mind, too, on why it cannot be another 28 years before the citizens of this fine nation get the chance to do it all again at the Greatest Show on Earth.
The next version is in Spain, Portugal and Morocco in four years’ time. Just a short hop and a skip away, with beaches and sun guaranteed, and nowhere near the same strain on the pocket. If Boston’s been a blast, that’s got the potential to be biblical – with the kind of exodus of people even Moses would tip his hat to.
