While his team-mates in the New York Giants whooped it up in their Arizona locker room yesterday, Greenock-born Lawrence Tynes pondered his part in a Super Bowl comeback triumph that stunned America.

Speaking from the University of Phoenix Stadium, Tynes was scarcely able to absorb an achievement that began with a move to the States as a football-mad 10-year-old - and culminated with a place in Super Bowl history.

Giving a flawless performance on the biggest stage of his life, the former Scottish Claymores player nailed the first and last points of the Giants' first championship in 18 years. It was the team's greatest result.

Starting a season 0-2, and up against a New England Patriots team intent on becoming only the second team to go through a season unbeaten, the Giants were arguably pitted against the greatest side in National Football League history.

As he basked in the glory of the incredible comeback, the thoughts of the 29-year-old kicker were close to his homeland.

"I owe so much to Scotland," he said. "I'm sure the people were all rooting for me tonight and I'm proud to say I'm the first Scot to ever win the Super Bowl.

"This is a long way from the Claymores and training at Stepps. I used to have the soup and a roll after practice - that was my favourite.

"I started there and I still consider myself a Claymore. I'm not sure if all this has sunk in yet - maybe it won't until I read about it in the papers, and I get a ring that's bigger than my head."

At least half of all US households, and millions worldwide, watched the £1500-a-ticket game. With baseball displaced as the country's national pastime, the first Sunday in February is now America's unofficial secular holiday and part of its cultural history.

All of which is a long way from Campbeltown where Tynes, a lifelong Celtic fan, and his two brothers, were raised by their American father, Larry, and Scots mother, Margaret-Ann.

Nearly two decades after emigrating to Florida, Tynes's father and brother, Jason, stood on the pitch beside his wife, Amanda, to celebrate his victory.

In the midst of it all, Tynes also took a call from representatives of fellow Scot Craig Ferguson - who recently applied for US citizenship. The kicker was asked to appear as a guest in Ferguson's Hollywood chat show. Last month, Tynes wooed David Letterman on The Late Show following his overtime field goal against Green Bay Packers, which sent the Giants to Arizona. But growing up in the Sunshine State, Tynes's dream was more of wearing the Celtic hoops than of Super Bowl appearances. He yearned to be back amid the tumult of the Old Firm. And, at his high school, he set a still-unbeaten record - scoring seven goals in one game of soccer, as it was called.

During his law studies at Troy State University in 2001, he was signed by Kansas City Chiefs, before being released at the end of training.

He then played for the Claymores for a year before joining Ottawa Renegades in the Canadian Football League. Kansas re-signed him a year later, where he stayed until the end of 2006.

He joined the Giants at the start of this season, and his achievement as the first Scot to win a Super Bowl is comparable with Glaswegian Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round The World" in 1951, which won the pennant for the then New York Giants' baseball team.

Of his part in the game that made history, Tynes said: "It wasn't like anything I expected out there but, after I made my first kick, it just felt like a regular game. I felt the moment of it right from the kick-off, but it was just felt like a normal game. Kickers like to get a field goal in early and, thankfully, I had the opportunity."

Tynes then pulled down his sock to show a swollen ankle which, he said, had been plaguing him since Green Bay. "There wasn't any danger of me missing the game," he said, "But I suffered a bruised tendon in Green Bay. I've been keeping it quiet from everyone."

The only sadness for Tynes was that his brother, Mark, who is serving a 27-year jail sentence for drugs offences, could not share his on-field moment. "I wish he was here. I have my dad, my wife, my brother and my brothers-in-law. It's unfortunate he couldn't be here," said Tynes.

"They only gave me one pass for my wife to get on the field, but no-one stopped me bringing my dad and brother on as I had the best pass there is - a winner's jersey," he added.