Lawrence Shankland was the first of the Scotland strikers to have his own say in the debate over who should start in the national side’s World Cup opener against Haiti, his feet doing the talking as he underlined his own credentials with two deadly strikes in the friendly win over Curacao.
The double for Shankland, who now has six goals in 19 caps for his country, capped off a dream week for the striker, having sealed a move to boyhood heroes Rangers on Tuesday.
For Kenny McLean, the quality of Shankland’s finishing at the weekend came as no surprise, and he now believes his long-time friend and teammate can step up to be the main man for his country in attack, and help fire the Scots to a historic World Cup campaign in North America.
“I think he can,” McLean said.
“He showed his clinical finishing. It's what he's always done no matter where he's been.
“Obviously, he was at a level that he was way better than for a long time. He's now done really well at Hearts, got his move to Rangers and I'm over the moon for him.
“He's a good friend, he's a good mate of mine, with a great family. I think he's got so much more to give again. I think he'll improve again.
“Saturday just showed you what he's all about. He's so much more than goals, but that's the bread and butter, isn't it?
“That's what that's what you want from your striker, and he put away two very, very good finishes. It’s obviously great for his confidence, which helps us.
“I was at Aberdeen with him and it he was similar to what he is now. He he's always been what he is. I think even people who would have saw him at Ayr and Dundee United and stuff like that, he he's always been that person.
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“You know what you're getting from Lawrence and that's going to be getting between the sticks, and over the last couple of years he's brought so much more to his game.
“At Hearts this year, he’s dropped into the number 10 and played with (Claudio) Braga. It's been amazing to see, he links the team so well.
“So, again, it's something else that the manager will look at to play him with somebody else like he did on Saturday, but it’s always good to see him between the sticks, that's what you want from your striker.”
If Shankland does grab the goals that take Scotland into the World Cup knockout stages for the first time he will join McLean in claiming hero status among the Tartan Army, a position that is forever assured for the Norwich City captain after his long-range lob over Kasper Schmeichel to put the icing on the cake of the win over Denmark back in November that sealed qualification.
McLean has been touched by the outpouring of affection that has come his way since that night, though he did admit that the Hampden crowd now loudly urging him to shoot every time he receives the ball – no matter where that may be on the pitch – is taking a little bit of getting used to.
"Yeah, I can hear it, I try not to let people make my mind up!” he said.
“I wouldn’t’ say it’s off-putting, it’s encouraging more than anything. You can hear it but sometimes it might not be the right option to take!
"What happened back in November was amazing and it's great the fans can have a bit of fun with it. But I still need to make the right decisions. I did choose [to shoot] one time and it wasn’t a bad effort so I'll try and pick and choose my moments when it's right. I thought, I need to have a go at one point.
“Everyone talks about [the goal], which is obviously a good thing because it meant so much to everybody and it gave so much joy to everybody what we've all done, what we've achieved together and the fans included. So, obviously it means a lot to everybody, with what we've got off the back of it.
“It was a great moment for me personally, great moment for everybody. But it was all about the team qualifying that night and it's just put everybody in better spirits, I think.
“Now we're here, we've got work to do, and we fly out and we get to it.”
As McLean mentions, there is a determination within the Scotland camp to ensure that the dramatic circumstances around their qualification for the World Cup isn’t the end of that particular story, but just the beginning of a tale where they eventually go on to re-write the history books.
“Of course there is,” he said.
“We don't just want to want to rest on what we've done.
“We believe that we can we can be better than what's been previously and we know we've got the quality, we know we've got the squad, we know we've got the whole background team in in place to take us to where we want to be.
“We think we've got a good chance of getting out of the group and we'll go there with confidence, and we'll give it our give it everything, because that's all we can do and we'll see where it takes us.
“We want to give people memories and things that they can they can talk about. Hopefully, it's not the wait that we've had as players, as fans, and we can do it more often.
“We've got it here, so we need to enjoy it, we need to embrace it, we need to do all we can and hopefully again give memories for other people.”
