Certain footballers are unfortunate enough to be branded "brittle". Every club has them, players who recover from a strained calf only to last 20 minutes before tweaking a hamstring.
Infuriating for fans and useless to managers, they are often consigned to the periphery or cast aside entirely as their once-promising careers dwindle away in gyms and treatment rooms.
Jon Daly, the Dundee United striker, had begun to acquire such a reputation. One of Craig Levein's first signings for the club in January 2007, the Irishman has been plagued by an array of ailments. After a slow start, he scored in his 10th appearance, adding another in the next game. His Tannadice career seemed underway. Yet two matches later, he limped off with an apparently innocuous knee injury. It was later diagnosed as a damaged cruciate.
Seven months later, he returned but lasted just 25 minutes into his second match before snapping his ankle in two places. Again, he had hobbled off like he had sustained nothing more than a relatively insignificant dunt. Daly, clearly, is a hardy soul, a strapping targetman for whom the term "brittle" obviously does not apply.
"I haven't even started 20 games in the league for the club," admitted Daly after a second consecutive man-of-the-match performance and his second goal in two weeks. "I started not badly but I got my cruciate injury, came back for two games and broke my ankle in two places.
"Mentally it is tough, but you just have to stay strong and focused. You know you're going to get back eventually and I know I can play in this league so it was just a case of working hard in the gym and keep training hard until I got my chance. Now I'm getting a run and I've repaid the manager with a couple of goals."
Those two took his tally to five in four starts this season, albeit three came against Cowdenbeath in the Co-operative Insurance Cup. His effort against Inverness was a thing of beauty; an intricate passing move covering the breadth of the pitch, culminating in a teasing Sean Dillon cross and a delightfully adroit flick of the forehead by Daly.
Few deserved the goal more, for the 25-year-old was the outstanding performer afield. His presence, touch and ability to link play not only offered United's midfielders a reference point but also the defenders a target when they opted for a direct approach. Indeed, he could have added to his tally had Michael Fraser, the Inverness goalkeeper, not produced a fine acrobatic save to claw a header past.
"The keeper did well and I had a good chance in the second half too," said Daly, whose legacy also included an impressive shiner left around the right eye of marker Jamie Duff. "But I'm getting into good areas and getting chances but more importantly that's four wins in a row now and that spreads confidence through the team."
A steady stream of service from the flanks, with full-backs Dillon and Paul Dixon particularly impressive, meant the hosts created 11 good chances to score, but a combination of erratic finishing, bad luck and heroic defending prevented a more comfortable win.
A Lee Wilkie header just after the hour effectively ended the contest, although a concerted spell of Inverness pressure which included a couple of fine stops from Lukasz Zaluska, a disallowed effort and a Wilkie own goal ensured an unnecessarily nervy climax.
However, with nine points from their last three league matches, and just that own goal conceded, United will travel to Ibrox after the international break with confidence.
"Four away games in the first six was always going to be tough and we weren't getting the rub of the green either," insisted Daly. "But it seems to be coming now and we can now go to Ibrox looking to pick something up. We believe we can finish third but I think five or six clubs in the country will think the same. We want to push on from last season so if we didn't get there I think as a group we would be disappointed."
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