There was no way of taking two paracetamol and making the pain go away.
Any visit to the doctor runs the risk of bad news and when Billy Gilmour limped in to a room at Lesser Hampden to hear the verdict on his injured knee, the faces of Scotland’s medical staff told him everything he needed to know.
His hopes of playing in the 2026 World Cup were over.
World Cup warm-up games can be like dancing on the head of a pin. When Aaron Hickey went down clutching his shoulder, the Tartan Army took a sharp intake of breath.
The Brentford defender missed Euro 2024 after botched surgery on a hamstring tear and Scotland have grown to expect the worst in the weeks before a tournament.
While Hickey climbed back to his feet and played on, Gilmour planked himself on the Hampden turf in the 17th minute of a 4-1 win over Curacao and raised a hand in the air. Limping gingerly to the sidelines and down the tunnel his race was run. “The first conversation was really difficult,” said manager Steve Clarke.
“I thought the doctor [Johnny Gordon] and [physiotherapist] Stuart Collie handled it very well. They were the ones who had to pass on the bad news. So that’s really emotional.
“Then we had to tell his family, who were all there together at Lesser Hampden. And then it becomes even more emotional, both for Billy and for his family.”
Clarke has spoken often of how painful it felt to miss World Cups during his own playing days. A fine full-back, he won a miserly six caps and came close in 1990 and 1998, missing out on the final cut.
He was never as close as Napoli midfielder Gilmour, never at the point where he was downloading movies for the flight to America. Travelling back to the team hotel in Glasgow City Centre from Lesser Hampden, there was nothing he could say to numb his player’s pain. It was too soon.
Clarke said: “It was just about giving him time to get his head round it, that’s the first thing that needed to happen – he had to get his head round it.”
Gilmour was pictured the following morning leaving the Scotland team hotel in Glasgow on crutches. Around the same time teammates were checking out, settling up for extras and boarding the coach for Glasgow Airport en route to Palm Beach.
Later that day an image appeared of the squad lined up on the steps of the plane posing and grinning proudly. For Gilmour the picture must have felt like someone had pulled the dagger from his back and plunged it through his heart.
“He wanted to stay in the hotel overnight,” said Clarke. “He wanted to be there for the lads leaving the hotel the next morning, which I thought was really brave because had it been me I would just have left.
“But he wanted to be a part of it. He wanted to wish the lads well as they left the hotel. He was okay. Honestly, disappointed but okay.”
If there’s a positive to any of this, it’s the knowledge Scotland have other central midfielders. While Clarke would give his right arm for a goalscoring striker, a natural left winger or a goalkeeper who plays every week, he has more holding players than he could shake a stick at.
So many that Ryan Christie and Aaron Hickey play the position for clubs in the English Premier League and play somewhere else for Scotland. Needs must. For all that talent, all that depth, none do what Gilmour does.
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Taking the ball, controlling the tempo and picking a pass, the former Chelsea and Brighton player won a Serie A medal for a reason. Supporters relate to his sense of loss because, when he’s absent from the starting 11, they feel it too. “To miss out on a major tournament is disappointing at the best of times,” said Clarke.
“But to do it so close to the tournament, in a send-off game when it should be a really happy occasion for everybody, was tough. I’ve got to be honest, I struggled on Saturday night with the whole situation.
“It’s a six to eight-week injury and the most important thing for Billy now is to get his head right and be ready to have a good season at Napoli with the new manager if that’s what happens.”
The rainy season in Florida can feel a bit like the fair weekend in Falkirk. During a warm weather training camp in Fort Lauderdale, blistering sun was followed minutes later by the heavens opening up and cats and dogs tumbling down.
Haiti’s warm-up game against New Zealand was delayed for half an hour by a weather alert and, after losing Gilmour from his squad, Clarke can only hope lightning fails to strike twice when his side move to New Jersey to play Bolivia.
Before previous tournaments he lost Ryan Jack and Kenny McLean. At the next one, it was Lyndon Dykes then Ben Gannon-Doak. Gilmour has an open invitation to fly to the United States and feel part of things.
He wouldn’t really, of course, and that’s a valid reason to keep his distance. If anything, it might make the feeling worse and Clarke will leave the decision up to the player and his club. “I did say, ‘It would be great if you could get out for one of the games and maybe stay around the squad for three or four days’,” Clarke said. “That would help everybody I think.
“But maybe he doesn’t want to do it. Maybe he doesn’t want to come out. So we’ll leave that one to Billy.”
The last thing a manager needs at a major tournament is sadness or resentment. After one World Cup, a former Scotland manager wrote to a Premiership club to complain about the attitude of two of their barely-used players.
That partially explains why it made sense to pull young Tyler Fletcher into the squad as Gilmour’s late replacement. If he fails to play, a 19-year-old kid is less likely to mope around like a wet weekend in Wick. He feels fortunate to be there in the first place.
“I’ve already spoken to the players about that,” said Clarke. “A lot of the squad will play a lot of minutes. Some will play enough minutes. Some will play very little minutes. And some of the squad will play no minutes.
“The most important people for me are the people who play no minutes and very few minutes. Because if they are not good within the group, the group suffers. That’s a big part of your thinking when you go into something like this.
“Not long after I took this job, I bumped into a prominent English coach. I won’t say who because it sounds like I’m name-dropping. But he’d been a national manager and the gist of what he was saying was you’re probably taking about 14 or 16 players who you expect to use and 10 players who you might use – but they need to be good people…”
More than anything, they need to be fit and well. Facing Bolivia in New Jersey, the Scotland manager needs no more late fallers.
“It’s going to be difficult for the players,” said Clarke. “Every player who was at Lesser Hampden when Dykesie did his feels the impact. Then, obviously, losing Billy in that game at the weekend will affect the mood of some of the players playing in the next game against Bolivia.
“But it’s just something you have to deal with. They have to play the way they have to play and that’s the biggest thing.”
