Scottish Cup Final: Queens rise slowly but majestically

IF SOMEONE had revealed at half-time that the Scottish Cup final was to produce five goals, then instinct would surely have advised anyone to fear for the side then already trailing 2-0. The only football club mentioned in the Bible were giving the Good Book a bad name.

It wasn't Rangers who looked dead on their feet, but Queen of the South. Theirs was the exhaustion which comes from not having played enough. They appeared like the jogger at the start of a fitness programme – the mind was willing, the body wasn't quite in the groove yet. All the training sessions, all the practice matches in the world cannot sufficiently prepare footballers for competitive outings, particularly when they take the form of a cup final. Nervous as well as physical exertion impacted on Queens. The first half passed them by. When Jim Thomson and Ryan McCann clattered into each other in the run-up to Rangers' second goal, the Aero leather clothing company might have considered withdrawing their club sponsorship. Thomson modelled one of their leather jackets in the match programme, but landing on the Hampden turf having just bumped into a team-mate was not a good look.

Four weeks of inactivity had taken its toll. Queens signed off from the First Division on 26 April, with a 4-0 hammering at Dunfermline. This was before Rangers had even played the second leg of their Uefa Cup semi-final. As one wit had it: the last time Queens were seen in action chairman David Rae's thatch of silver hair was jet black. It had been quite some time.

But the fans had not forgotten them. They trundled up from Dumfries in vast numbers and blessed Hampden with their presence. 'God Save the Queens' was the wry message across one banner. Reminding them just what they and almost every other team are up against was the Union flag in the Rangers end. Lockerbie Loyal it read. While clearly not everyone in the south-west of Scotland had hitched their wagon to the Queens cause, it certainly felt like it. They filled up their allocation at Hampden as easily as most established SPL clubs. There was not a seat to be had as the teams arrived on the pitch. Finally the moment had arrived. Visitors to Palmerston Park are often directed to yellowing newspaper cuttings in the main stand which recall the side's run to the semi-final of the cup in 1950. But this was a final, and the glitz and the glamour was something different to what the likes of Jim Patterson had experienced back then.

Rae was at home listening to his transistor radio when the Dumfries side held Rangers to a 1-1 draw 58 years ago, before losing the replay 3-0. Here, the chairman was present in all his unpretentious glory. Perhaps the most enriching consequence of Queens' progress this season is this man becoming better known in Scottish football. Refreshingly, he refuses to conform.

For the pre-match meet-and-greet, he simply pulled on an old jacket and pointlessly patted down his hair. He punched the air when introduced, and the Queens fans roared their approval. What must Jean-Claude Darcheville have thought? In his last cup final, in Manchester less than a fortnight ago, he was introduced to Michel Platini. Here he was shaking hands with a farmer in an anorak. Rae represented a distinct contrast to the preening Rangers chief executive, Martin Bain, someone whose skin colour always seems a rather artificial hue.

Behind Bain glowed a man whose ruddiness is the natural result of a life exposed to the Solway air. The Ibrox chief executive could keep his candy-stripe tie, brown brogues and Mediterranean – or is it Consul Suncenter, Govan Road? – tan.

Like the CIS Cup final, the match build-up appeared to be dominated by a chairman. Mercifully, Rae's impact had been rendered through force of personality and not serious illness, as was the case with Dundee United's Eddie Thompson in March. The bond between Rae and Gordon Chisholm seems just as tight as the one which exists between Thompson and his manager, Craig Levein.

The Queens chairman even permitted his manager to take the players away from the town to train this season. In the run-up to cup final day, this was regrettable. Indeed, it seemed as though some Queens players had been left reeling by the realisation of just how significant an occasion it was for the Dumfries community. This had possibly been obscured by a training programme which remained based in Glasgow, leaving the players divorced from the gathering excitement in the town itself. By the time the enormity of it all had sunk in, Queens were 2-0 down.

The interval was a god-send. Inside the 'home' dressing room at Hampden, Chisholm was required to make the half-time talk of his life. Afterwards, striker Stephen Dobbie revealed something of what had been said. "The gaffer said we were here on merit," he said. "Have no regrets when you walk off that park." Had there been raised voices? "We got a bit of a telling off," said Sean O'Connor. "We didn't perform in the first half."

"We have a great belief in the dressing room," added Robert Harris. "We fight for each other. A lot of teams who are 2-0 down to Rangers at half-time could have been looking at four or five. But the character is magnificent. I am proud to be a part of that. Four weeks off is a long time. It took us a while to get going. But in the second half, we really gave it a go."

In the end, rather than the one-sided affair some – with initial good reason – had feared, we were presented with one of the most thrilling finals in recent years. Few will forget the sight of an airborne Thomson straining every sinew in his neck to head home the equaliser, and at the Queens end too. Given they had never before been at a cup final, it was possibly the greatest moment in the club's 89-year history, though even without it, the fans had ensured that this was a day like no other in Queens' history.