Even by the SFA’s standards this takes the biscuit
IMAGINE for a moment you are sitting on the threeperson independent panel that presided over James Keatings’ appeal against the booking for diving that has ruled him out of the Challenge Cup Final.
You look at the image of the Caley Thistle forward being barged by Rangers youngster Ciaran Dickson on the edge of the box from three or four different angles and there’s not a single one that suggests no contact has been made.
You listen to evidence from referee Greg Aitken, who says that from his angle there didn’t appear to be contact but the all-seeing eyes of the TV lenses paint a different picture.
If you’re on that panel you have to tell him he has made a mistake. The fact the whistler himself hasn’t held his hand up is equally baffling. Actually, scrub that – it’s shameful.
It’s a foul all day long.
And even if you don’t think the Ibrox kid has deliberately taken Keatings out, you know there has been contact and the Inverness striker hasn’t thrown himself to the ground looking for the decision.
If the panel had been made up of Stevie Wonder, David Blunkett and the guy from Peters And Lee, they’d have signed it off as a refereeing blunder and told Keatings he was free to play Raith Rovers in the final on March 28.
But these three men, or women, or a combination (we don’t know because their identities are kept a secret) somehow came to the conclusion that Keatings had dived.
But even if they’d refused, for whatever reason, to believe their eyes then surely a look at this player’s disciplinary record would have told them it’s not in Keatings’ make-up to cheat for a penalty.
In his first two senior seasons, he played 15 games for St Johnstone and Hamilton Accies. Keatings didn’t pick up a single booking.
In season 2013/14, he turned out