‘ Common sense’ was cast out of the window says Celtic’s Christie
It was Call of Duty on the Playstation that prevented Ryan Christie doing his duty for both country and club.
And, speaking at length for the first time since the Covid- 19 controversy that left him self- isolating for a fortnight, the Celtic attacker is still perplexed and exasperated as to why that was so.
The 25- year- old was only able to return to competitive action in the second half of Thursday’s 3- 1 loss to home to AC Milan i n the Europa L e a g u e . He mi s s e d S c o t - l and’s three i nternationals earlier this month, and Saturday’s derby defeat by Rangers as a consequence of being adjudged a close contact in t he i nternational camp of Stuart Armstrong, who tested positive for Covid- 19 t wo days before Steve Clarke’s men faced Israel in their Euro 2020 play- off semi- final on October 8.
From that point, Christie believes reason and “common sense” was cast out of the window. That is because, despite Kieran Tierney also being deemed a close contact of Armstrong, the Arsenal fullback was able to feature for his club in their meeting with Manchester City last Saturday. In contrast, Christie was forced to remain home alone and watch his team slump to a sorry defeat against their bitter rivals from the couch.
How Christie paints the circumstances of his falling foul of the track and trace process raises questions over the Scotland protocols put in place by
SFA doctor John Maclean, and the disconnect between the football authorities and the Holyrood government in comparison to their equivalents south of the border. Christie maintains that he, Armstrong and Tierney breached no guidelines in their Playstation gaming session. In a sizeable suite, he said they effectively could have been in separate rooms. “The crazy thing was we were spaced out that even unintentionally we were
social distanced. It wasn’t like we were on the one TV or the one Playstation,” he said.
“This is going to sound really geeky but one of us was on one side of the room, with a TV on that side, one of us was in the middle facing [ towards another wall with a TV] and the other facing a different way [ with their own TV]. We all had headsets, and we weren’t even looking at each other to speak t o each other, or anything like that. Before the decision
was made [ that I had to quarantine] and we were speaking to the government, at the time the Scotland guys measured the distance between the seats and it was 3.8m, or something. We were following rules and social distancing, plus through previous camps we were told by the international doctor that this was ok to [ have a gaming session like that]. So, it was very frustrating to have done that and still been punished for it.
“I was following every single protocol. We’ve done it since June/ July at club level, so it’s not as if we go away for internationals and throw all that in the bin, we follow the same duties. It is frustrating when you follow all these protocols and it still comes back to bite you. I know there is a so- called bedding in period for the virus but you need to wonder when it goes past common sense I need to stay in despite constant negative tests.”