Ding-dong in Dingwall managed to top the lot
SCOTTISH football: Bringing you world-class rows and rammies for more than a century. Never mind the quality, feel the rage. Man oh man, what a weekend. What a collection of clattering calamities — capped by a carry-on for the ages in the Highlands yesterday. One of the greatest phantom penalty awards in modern history, followed by a captain’s red card, then the exploiting of an Old Firm eligibility loophole genuinely connected to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ? Consider the day seized, Ross County, Celtic, gullible referee Don Robertson … and the holy shambles of the SFA ‘Fast Track’ disciplinary system. With Saturday producing a relegation dogfight enlivened by the awarding of a goal that didn’t actually cross the line, it was always going to take something special from the officials to switch the focus and fury towards Dingwall yesterday. Talk about rising to the occasion. Alex Schalk being retrospectively penalised for his outrageous belly flop, the striker not even having the decency to make incidental contact with the watching Erik Sviatchenko on the way down, somehow doesn’t feel like enough of a response in this instance. If you’re a fan of Dundee, Hamilton, Motherwell or Inverness Caley Thistle then the damage may already have been done. As for how Celtic were affected, well, let’s be clear on one point. Nobody is to blame for Scott Brown getting sent off but Scott Brown. The Celtic captain was back to his bad, old days of diving in first and not stopping to ask questions later as he clattered into that challenge. If his frustration levels haven’t been cranked up all the way to 11 by Robertson’s awarding of the penalty, though, does he commit that foul? Might the red mist have been a little less bloody? Well, at least the long journey down the A9 will have been made less stressful for the Scotland midfielder by the realisation that Easter had come to his rescue. Yes, Broony, you will go to the Old Firm ball at Hampden on Sunday. We’ll talk about the league game against Rangers, oh, next week some time … unless you share a lawyer with Neil Lennon, that is. Obviously, the collective response to repeated refereeing errors has to be better than simply demanding more from officials. Goal-line technology is already in place elsewhere and the video review system being trialled in certain competitions would have settled both major talking points. Then again, fewer game-changing, potentially season-altering decisions that beggar belief would drastically reduce our regular diet of furiously heated debates. Carry on, then.