Jordan Rhodes has already become a celebrated figure.
The adulation only makes him bashful, but adjusting to international football now involves coping with the expectation of supporters. His prolific goalscoring record has already established Rhodes as a player worth being hopeful about.
The home fans chanted for Rhodes to be introduced after 60 minutes. He arrived soon after and there were moments of promise, not least when he raced towards the front post to meet a Charlie Adam cross, but the ball skipped off his head and into the side-netting. There were no other clear opportunities, and Rhodes was left feeling humbled by his burgeoning popularity.
"I'm not sure what to say other than that I would have loved to have come on and reward the fans, but it wasn't to be," the Blackburn Rovers striker said. "I'll just do my best for them. It's very flattering, a huge compliment for someone who's only 22 and who hasn't done too much in the game. I'll give 100% and hopefully that's good enough. It would have been good to have come on and got the win, but it wasn't to be.
"I didn't even see the ball hit the side-netting. The ball was wet, it was a slippy surface, and the ball just glided off my head. It's just one of those things. You turn around and it's in the net or not. [There was another chance] when I just tried to go in and make contact with the ball with any part of my body, but the right-back got their first. I just try to do my best in every game."
Rhodes is not a novice, but there is little experience of coping with the extreme responses to individual results. The draws with Serbia and Macedonia, seem grave results when points must be collected at home. Rhodes, though, was not ready to concede anything. "I'm new to all of this, so I'm not sure if two points is good or not," he said. "We've still got games to play against the teams at the top. We just need to stay positive, do our best and see where that takes us. Of course we wanted to win, but we were passing it about, there was a good tempo and there were a lot of positives to take from it."
There is a good unity of spirit among the players, and defeatism wasn't evident. The manager continues to be respected, too, even if the supporters have become exasperated with Levein. Two matches at Hampden have now ended with widespread booing, but the mood among the players is to remain in defiant support of Levein.
"Immensely," Rhodes answered when asked if the manager still has the support of his squad. "But you'll have to ask Gary Caldwell and Kenny Miller, and the other senior pros who have been here for a while and who been involved in campaigns before."
Miller is the player whose position is under threat from the emerging Rhodes and, while admitting the team "severely under-performed", he felt the atmosphere around Hampden did not help. "There has obviously been a lot of negative things from Saturday, rightly or wrongly. It's not up to me to say, but it's definitely a stranger atmosphere than I've ever played in at Hampden," said the striker.
"You [normally] have everyone pulling in the same direction and for whatever reason it didn't seem like that tonight. I have never played at a game at Hampden when they have not been behind us. I'm not having a go at the fans, I understand the frustrations. We had two home games and were looking for six points and if not, four, so I can understand the frustration. But I think that can be let known towards the end of a game, not during it. It can transmit down to the pitch."
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