THERE are no clean hands in the plague pit that is the fallout from Celtic’s double-dubious Dubai misadventure.
The floundering, foolish
Parkhead club itself.
The clowns who run the league it plays in, as cowardly as they are incompetent.
Our blessed First Minister, nursing an agenda against the national sport more transparent than a clingfilm jockstrap.
Each of them up to their oxters in the bacterial dreck of a debacle whose jaw-dropping stupidity is matched only by a stench of hypocrisy more stomach-churning than week-old fish.
Each more than due a shoeing for bringing the game and the country into disrepute.
Only question is, which order to line them up in for their turn at the toe-end of the tackities?
On balance, I’ve gone: Spineless league bosses, then First Minister, then chaos-riddled club.
The SPFL gets it first for one simple reason: That we wouldn’t have been wading through all this nonsense at all had they possessed the cojones to veto
Celtic’s demand to reshuffle a fixture list we’d been warned from the off was unshufflable.
All it took was one word, the same word they’ve spat at
St Mirren and
Kilmarnock and at
Hibs when each came to them with genuine reasons for requesting postponements:
NO.
But then, St Mirren and Killie and Hibs don’t terrify Neil Doncaster and his cohorts the way Celtic do.
So, while those genuine reasons for postponements were not only rejected but resulted in punishments or threats, Parkhead’s spurious need for some warm-weather training was nodded through without a second thought.
When all three of Jim Goodwin’s keepers were forced to self-isolate on the eve of three games in a week, he was told to dry his eyes and get on with it.
When he and Alex Dyer then found their squads decimated by positive Covid cases, not only weren’t they supported through the crisis, they were punished for being unable to fill a teamsheet.
And when Hibs, quite understandably, complained about having to play at Parkhead on Monday night without the home team being re-tested in the wake of Christopher Jullien’s illness and the quarantining of 13 team-mates?
Not only were their worries dismissed, they were promised “severe consequences” if they didn’t turn up and play.
If anything finally, empirically proved how unfit for purpose this chocolate teapot of an organisation is, then surely it is such a craven cave-in to a big club’s whim while acting tough with the rank and file; a gross dereliction of duty that edges the entire season closer to the brink of being shut down by a government who’d take the greatest pleasure in clanging the shutters right on our toes.
Yet, as much as many would shrug Hell Mend Us should Nicola Sturgeon whip out that red card she’s been threatening football with since the days back in August of the Pittodrie Eight and the wally Bolingoli, she hardly comes out this mess spotless either.
Sure, she’s right when she says that the Dubai trip wasn’t essential.
But then, neither were Catherine Calderwood’s sneaky jaunts to her second home in Fife at the height of Lockdown One and the First Minister’s first instinct then was to defend her.
Yes, she’s justified in pointing to pictures of Celtic players and staff sharing a poolside beer and asking if this is why elite sport was exempted from the rules imposed on you and me.
But where were the same questions when Scotland players were doing the conga after the play-off win in Serbia?
That night, she was all over it, she was loving it. If she could have called a snap IndyRef2 there and then, she would have.
All I’m saying here is, let’s be careful with the bricks in greenhouses when it comes to reading the room, Nicola.
Plus, she and her government knew long ago Celtic were planning this trip, so if they didn’t want them to go they should have said so.
Right up to the last minute, they could easily have tipped them the wink that a new lockdown was imminent and that maybe they should reconsider the jaunt.
The fact they did none of the above hugely dilutes their hindsight-fuelled snorts of disapproval.
The thought that perhaps they were happy to let the trip go ahead in the hope that it turned out the way it has . . . well, you’d hope it’s fantasy, but nothing would surprise you.
And then we have Celtic themselves.
That blunderfest of a 91st-minute equaliser they shipped against Hibs was everything that’s wrong with them, brought to life by a blind choreographer.
A chaotic cameo that encapsulated their inability to cope with pressure after close on a decade of unchallenged dominance.
On the park, they lack leadership and the most basic of game management.
Off it, the arrogance bred by nine in a row and an unparalleled run of domestic cup success has lulled them into a string of massive misjudgements which have, one by one, come back to bite them.
Not strengthening the team effectively, not taking the threat from Rangers seriously enough, taking their fanbase for granted and, now, traipsing off to the sun while that fanbase is stuck at home, banned from visiting their grannies.
Their mealy-mouthed get-out on Dubai is that the new lockdown only happened once they were out there.
But dogs in the street knew it was coming, so please don’t insult our intelligence.
And before anyone chimes in that as Jullien tested positive last Friday, the chances were he’d been incubating the virus from before they flew out and therefore it’s not an issue . . . don’t, just don’t.
The crucial difference is that had they stayed home he’d have been packed off as far from the squad and management as possible, rather than sharing a plane with them to and from the Middle East.
Fact is, there are no mitigating factors to any of this shambles; not from Celtic’s standpoint, not from the government’s and not from the SPFL’s, because each had the chance to knock this sorry, silly trip on the head and each failed to take it.
Each has let themselves and those they represent down badly.
Worst of all, each has made it clear in their own way that there’s one rule for those and such as those and another for the plebs.
It all makes you wonder why the rest of us sacrifice so much to try and return the world to some sort of normal.
DON’T like to say I told you so.
But long before a ball was kicked in the lower leagues, this column warned that theirs was a campaign doomed never to be completed.
Today, it looks awfully like this prediction is coming true.
The decision to shut down all football below Championship level, along with the Scottish Cup, for the next three weeks was pretty much inevitable in the current climate.
The SFA had to be seen to do something and the something they chose to do was the easiest option.
I just fear that, come January 31, it will be easier still for them to roll the shutdown on for another three weeks, given that most of those affected are only involved in football part-time and won’t have been able to isolate the way full-timers would.
And once three weeks becomes six, well, how do we possibly catch up with the backlog?
Bottom line is, we don’t.
So while we hope for the best, it would be delusional not to prepare for the worst. Which might just include some clubs not coming back at all.
NO harm to
Dundee, but how heartbreaking was it to see Bonnyrigg Rose fall one last sclaffed clearance short of one of
THE great giantkillings at Dens on Saturday night?
To hold on to a 1-0 lead into the 94th minute of 95 was miraculous.
To see the equaliser bobble home after all their heroics must have felt like a medicine ball in the knackers.
To watch them peel themselves off the turf to lead again? Wow, that was special.
Yet the law of diminishing returns that comes as standard with heavy legs and weary minds made it no surprise that, in the end, they couldn’t quite hold on.
As soon as it went 2-2, you kind of know it would be 3-2 and the fairytale would be dashed.
Bravo to all concerned, though, for a performance that’ll long be remembered.
From the amazing Mark Weir between the sticks to Lee Currie with his two unerring spot-kicks to buzzbomb substitute Ross Gray up top, they were extraordinary.