High Dive
The cheeky chappy of Scottish football has a winning smile - and the attractive habit of not taking himself too seriously.
But yesterday things took a turn for the worse - with the news reports about Rangers appealing to the Scottish Football Association (SFA) - against a red card for one of their players.
The Rangers player - Sone Aluko - was given a red card and a two match bad for 'diving' in a match last week against Dunfermline - an act that earned Rangers a penalty from which they scored in a 2-1 win.
But the decision was reviewed after the game - and the Rangers player was subsequently adjudged to have earned his penalty by diving - or cheating to use plain language.
A three-man Judicial Panel - drawn from a pool of around 100 former referees, players, managers, club officials and legal representatives - upheld that decision yesterday and rejected Rangers appeal.
Yet instead of accepting the decision calmly the Rangers manager blew a fuse - and railed against the SFA in the press:
“I have to say that I am absolutely shocked and extremely angry at the fact this committee has upheld the decision to give Sone a two-game ban. The meeting was chaired by a former referee and I have to say his decision making hasn’t improved any since he stopped refereeing.
The three gentlemen on the panel have effectively called my player a cheat and a liar, neither of which he is. What they’ve effectively done is they have said the player has cheated to get the penalty.
It’s an absolutely incredible decision given that the referee is literally five yards from the incident. He has a better view than anybody in the stadium and they have gone not only against the referee but the player as well. The thing that stuns me is that the panel agreed there was contact so for them to uphold the decision and go against their own referee, who had a particularly good game, is ridiculous.”
Having watched the incident in slow motion - along with lots of other people - I have to say it's as clear as clear can be - that the Rangers player dived.
In fact Sone Aluko went down - as if he'd been shot by a sniper - and any contact with the opposing Dunfermline player was exaggerated out of all proportion.
The only way to stop this kind of behaviour is for football clubs and managers - to stop defending their players when they are so clearly in the wrong - and that's why Ally McCoist has gone down in my estimation today.
