SIX bonus points but Robinson feels only sympathy for Killie and Saints
AND they say you can’t rewrite history? Suddenly, five weeks down the line, October l ooks t o have been a pretty good month f or Motherwell.
Played four, won four. Twelve goals for, none against.
It’s a sequence which has helped them rise from eighth in the league to fifth. Except that two of the games didn’t actually happen.
Yes, the Fir Park side did beat Livingston 2-0 and Ross County 4-0, but they have now been handed 3-0 victories for their cancelled games with St Mirren and Kilmarnock after those clubs were found guilty of breaching Covid regulations on Thursday.
Not that Motherwell boss Stephen Robinson was to be found gloating or telling anyone his team got what they deserved after suddenly gaining six extra points. The Northern Irishman insisted he only has sympathy for two rival clubs.
There but for the grace of God, he reckons, goes any top-flight team who take even so much as a day off from the Premiership’s protocols.
Now that the precedent has been set, Robinson chose his words immaculately yesterday as he took stock of his team’s new-found status of fifth. Not bad after their last two league games finished 1-1 with St Johnstone and a 4-1 thrashing by Celtic.
‘The consequences are grave,’ he said of punishments for those who break the rules.
‘I don’t know the ins and outs of anybody else’s protocols and it would be really unfair of me to comment, because I wouldn’t want a ny o t her manager commenting on anything we do.
‘But we follow the protocols to the best of our ability, right to the letter.
‘Was the outcome we got fair? I don’t make the decisions. We’ve got nothing to do with the outcome. As a football club, all we asked for was clarity.
‘ Now, potentially, this is a precedent. The people who make the decisions have investigated whether there was wrongdoing, it’s not for me to comment on whether there was or wasn’t.
‘If we’d had to play the games, we would have. And, yeah, of course the league table looks better for us this morning because we got the six points. But had you said to me we had to play the games, I’d expect a minimum of four points from them anyway.’
Those extra points, though, weren’t enough to halt Robinson’s empathy for his fellow pros.
With Dundee United the latest to fall under the spotlight after an outbreak, he admits the task of making sure every player sticks to the rules every day is onerous.
‘I have sympathy for everybody,’ he said. ‘I have sympathy for the managers managing i n this situation and dealing with the outcomes.
‘I have sympathy for the new players coming up to Scotland and they train, go home on their own and sit in their house.
‘ The l ucky thing about us, though, is we are allowed to go to work, some people aren’t.
‘People are losing their jobs and being made redundant. Christmas is coming up and where do they get money from?
‘In the bigger picture, that’s probably more of a suffering than players having to go home to their house on their own.
‘But we’ll be hammering home the message. It’s really frustrating for the players, for the staff and everybody, but we’re not going to change our protocols because they are right.
‘You have to remind players all the time, they’re young men. You have to continually be on top of them.
‘There are signs everywhere, there are X’s where you have to stand. They don’t travel together or mix with each other and there’s only a certain amount of people allowed in each dressing room.
‘So, getting team spirit and camaraderie — for everyone in Scottish f ootball, not j ust Motherwell — it’s difficult.
‘All y ou c an do i s keep hammering it home, and you need a little bit of luck, too.
‘We have a bubble here, but we don’t have a bubble outside like some people could have.
‘We have ownership of them for four or five hours a day and then they go home to their parents, their girlfriends or whoever. They’ve all got jobs and lives, too.’
A win t oday at home to Hibernian will move Motherwell to within two points of the Easter Road club in fourth position, with a return to Europe suddenly very much in their sights.
For Robinson, though, it feels like simply enduring the season is the greater objective.
‘It’s a season we just want to get through,’ he admitted, ‘because it’s not enjoyable at times.
‘ You j ust don’t have any predictability. We don’t know when we’re going to train, if we’re having to shut the club down for two days, we don’t know what players we’re going to have available.
‘This isn’t just Motherwell, this is all the clubs and there are lots of people affected by it.
‘It’s a really difficult season and we just have to get through it.’