Directing coverage of live football must be a stressful affair. Pointing a trove of cameras and microphones at unscripted, unpredictable and extreme emotional turbulence, for the benefit of a pre-watershed audience, comes with many potential pitfalls.
Lingering on the shot of Kevin Nisbet’s relief at finally finding the net for Aberdeen, for instance.
A cathartic moment, as even the most rudimentary of lip readers could discern. His sentiments were echoed around a stadium grown unused to seeing home success.
If Nisbet’s goal, served to him by Shayden Morris’ trademark substitute shuffle, allowed his own memory to tape over the shuddering miss of minutes earlier, the audience may not be so lucky.
For that jaw-dropping post-rattler, followed within seconds by the momentary shock of Dunfermline’s rescinded penalty, was emblematic of Aberdeen’s season so far, in that the striker had tried to do all the right things, for legitimate reasons, yet still almost tipped off unforeseen disaster.
In attempting to create the conditions in which missing was impossible, it became inevitable.
Having stared down the barrel of their lead being cut to a dicey one, no wonder stretching it to three was greeted with such full-throated fricative felicitations, among words found in that region of the dictionary.
Immediate attention now turns to the quest to win another game in the league.
Though experience states that a 3-0 cup win against lower-division opponents does not necessarily lend momentum to a stalled Premiership campaign, the Dons’ next opponents are in a similar state after their own recent results.
Dundee are a bowler who has been hit for two sixes to start the over; Aberdeen must either find or fake the confidence to take a swing at them on Saturday before they settle back into their rhythm. Not even the best-founded forward defensives are impervious to accidents.
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