This Celtic side has managed to keep Aberdeen at arm’s length throughout virtually all of the last eight seasons. Let us therefore hope that the manner of the game’s opening goal is a better omen of things to come than its last.
For as the ball floated down towards the back post, the extended limb of Jonjoe Kenny held a fistful of Lewis Ferguson’s jersey at its fullest stretch. But it was not enough to prevent the majestic midfielder from nudging himself into double figures for the season, and the Dons into an unaccustomed lead against their most difficult of opponents.
It did not feel like a particularly extraordinary scoreline at the time, but what followed was a remarkable display of stoic, energetic and wholehearted defending from every one of the 14 players pressed into service. Almost every one of them laid himself out, at one point or another, to extinguish a Celtic attack, a rousing performance which belied the energy expended in the weekend’s two-hour salvage operation.
And yet, in the very last reckoning, it was still not quite enough. The concession of an equaliser to Celtic’s very last touch of the ball was a harsh lesson for this developing team that football can take away, in an instant, that which has taken a long time to build.
A lesson too in the habit-forming ability of success. For though Celtic have been a pale shadow of themselves this year, going the distance to finally snatch a result is such second nature that they pull it off even when it means nothing to them. Or less, at least, than it did to the Dons, whose surrender of two points dramatically shifts the calculus in the battle for third.
If they didn’t already, the new management team now knows what it will take to prosper. This much – and more.