FOR a wee fella, Shaun Maloney doesn't half know how to score a big goal.

For a wee fella, he isn't half good at lifting five million people and carrying them on his own. This agricultural, ugly-on-the-eye game was slipping away from Scotland at Parkhead - jeez, the whole European Championships were growing a little more distant too - when all of a sudden this little box of tricks flicked a switch to sent a power surge through Glasgow and out across the whole country.

Maloney and Ikechi Anya worked a short corner, Scott Brown exchanged passes with Maloney and the Wigan man cut inside and caressed an absolute pearler of a shot. Oh it just curled beautifully inside goalkeeper David Forde's left-hand post. It was like pulling a plug and flushing away all the anxiety, tension and fear that had crept up on Scotland for the preceding 75 minutes. The irony wasn't lost on most of the 60,000 crowd: days of talk about Scots-born members of the Ireland team and the night turned on a moment of magic from a lad born in Malaysia.

Make no mistake, Maloney's goal was oxygen to drowning men. Poland's chilling 4-0 rout of Georgia in Tbilisi earlier in the evening shot them to 10 points and Group D was beginning to look like it would crystallise into them and Germany at the top and a scrap between Scotland and Ireland for third place and the risky last chance of the play-offs. Now, with their second home win either side of that draw in Warsaw, Scotland have clawed themselves on to seven points, level with the Irish but with the points fodder of Gibraltar still to come. Had Ireland's gritty but mediocre team held out for the goalless draw that was in their grasp for much of the night, or equalised from their scruffy late barrage of pressure, it would have meant Scotland had dropped points from three of their first four qualifiers. When Grant Hanley sent the ball flying on to his own crossbar in stoppage time it took more years off Scotland's national life expectancy than booze, fags and deep frying put together. Maloney's moment changed everything.

Did Scotland deserve it? Yes, they did more to try to win, but it was a goal which didn't seem to be coming. They kept trying to jab the key in the lock without getting in. Before going off after almost an hour with an injury Steven Fletcher was bright, taking the ball, laying it off, looking for movement, constantly occupying the Irish defence. He couldn't bury the couple of chances which came his way, though. Maloney and Steven Naismith beavered around him, trying to build little pass-and-move triangles and try to find a way through. At times they must have felt they were playing with a beach ball inside a telephone box. Ireland crowded and suffocated them whenever they got near the box. Naismith shrugged them off deep into the second half but when he crossed low into the box Fletcher's replacement, Chris Martin, slipped a shot just outside the post. By then Parkhead was growing more subdued and fraught with every passing minute.

Anya was quiet and the full-backs, Andy Robertson and Steven Whittaker, defended well but didn't fling in enough crosses to tease open the Irish. It was Ireland without their talisman. Robbie Keane was on the bench, and as far as anyone could work out dropped for a competitive game for the first time since 2001. They put him on late to save themselves, but to no avail.

Parkhead was slow to warm up. Congestion issues - on the roads and at the turnstiles - meant large queues were still outside several minutes into the game. The atmosphere was noisy enough, at times, but it felt like the Scottish support were keeping something back. They were waiting to take their lead from the team and from an opening goal. They had a long wait for it.

When James Morrison fell ill before the game Strahan had to rethink his options. He went with Charlie Mulgrew alongside Scott Brown in midfield. That left the inexperienced Robertson at left-back. O'Neill appeared to see that as an opportunity and put his occasional matchwinner, McGeady on the right wing to have a go at him. McGeady was booed as a matter of ritual - the most predictable sub-plot of the night, pantomime stuff as Gordon Strachan had expected - and only for a spell in the second half did he get going.

It was grim, attritional stuff. Niggly fouls and obstructions constantly interrupted the play by the end there were six bookings. Scotland had most of the intermittent chances. Fletcher put a header over from a corner and Mulgrew did likewise from a Maloney cross. Whittaker cut inside and unloaded a low shot. Maloney did great work to flash a ball across the box to Fletcher who attempted an awkward connection with his left foot instead of going with his right.

Two early chances came and went for Ireland. A skipping Jon Walters shot was comfortably held and when Robertson's clearing header went straight to Darron Gibson his volley was saved too. They were quiet, then, until McGeady saw more of the ball in the second half. From the left he hit a volley across goal which had Scottish hearts in mouths. From the right he chipped in some cute balls which asked questions of David Marshall and his centre-halves.

McGeady's every touch was jeered to the end, for playing for the wrong country. Surely there must have been one or two fans in Malaysia last night going "yeah, tell us about it".