The fallout from the penalty debate at Celtic Park has rumbled into the winter break.
This time last week they were standing firmly on the right side of the argument, having grabbed VAR by the horns in the name of the greater good.
They had the SFA pinned up against the ropes. They may even have had Wilie Collum squirming, which is precisely the way they prefer him. And then Rangers went and ruined it all by turning from morale crusaders into a paranoid wreck of a football club and a cliche of everything that’s been holding their resurgence back for much of the last decade or so. The moment someone in the chain of command used ‘fan media’ to leak to their own supporters that they had demanded Collum’s excommunication, was when the line of decency was overstepped.
And it immediately dragged Rangers back into a world of darkness and suspicion. Which is the very place they’ve been trying so hard to get away from since John Bennett added some much needed gravitas and cool headed diplomacy to the chairman’s post.
And yet, by delivering this latest low blow, they exposed the full extent of the distrust and resentment which still courses around the foundations of Ibrox, just below the surface. It’s a toxic legacy from the club’s fall from grace back in 2011 when their world caved in around them.
At a time when people like Martin Bain, Alistair Johnston and Paul Murray were crying out for help and warning of an imminent disaster, Scottish football stuck its fingers in its ears and turned its back on them. Murray even warned in advance of Craig Whyte’s takeover that the club he cared for so deeply would be in administration within a year if the ruinous deal was allowed to go through.
Of course, there is a counter argument here. The one that says Rangers were responsible for their own demise and that no one forced Sir David Murray to sell his stake to a fly-by-night. All of which is true. But even so, these scars run deep.
However, that doesn’t mean they are healthy or in the club’s best long-term interests. And when Rangers pandered to the lowest common denominator in their fan base by turning so calculatedly on Collum the official’s role in this debacle was reversed. In an instant, Collum went from villain to victim.
To make matters even worse, it wasn’t even an original piece of thinking. They played this same card on Collum way back in 2018 when making a formal complaint to the SFA after Daniel Candeias was sent off in a 2-0 win at St Mirren. The biggest tragedy of all is that, with that one crude, rather sinister misstep they lost an argument which needed to be won. For the sake of all Scottish football.
By demanding greater transparency and accountability on behalf of all top flight clubs, they were effectively pushing at an open door. But, somehow, they fell through it and landed flat on their face.
Let’s get rid of the elephant in the room here. Where some of the Rangers support are concerned, Collum’s day job as a teacher of religious education at a Roman Catholic school makes him one for the watching.
But the people in charge of the club ought to be a great deal bigger and better than that. Because every club in the top flight has reason to point to decisions that Collum has made on the pitch or in the VAR seat and wonder what on earth he was thinking about. And that includes Celtic.
Which is precisely why Rangers were wholly in the right to seek some kind of clarity to this latest Collum shaped calamity in the immediate aftermath of that 2-1 defeat at Parkhead. More than one week on and despite all manner of statement tennis, the events of December 30 remain murky at best. And unnecessarily so.
Delay. Delay. Delay. If only Collum had uttered those words when replays showed Alistair Johnston slapping the ball inside Celtic’s penalty box – conclusively proving that ref Nick Walsh had not properly seen the incident – then this whole unedifying fiasco would have been defused before the fuse was even lit.
After all, if Walsh spotted any part of Johnston’s body touching the ball, he would not have awarded Celtic with a goal kick. But, at the crucial moment, the typically headstrong Collum took it upon himself to make the call rather than trigger the on field review which would, in turn, have shown that Abdallah Sima was offside as part of the attacking phase of play or APP.
This would have been carried out within a matter of seconds and without the need for Walsh to go to the pitch side monitor for another look. And it would have resulted in the correct decision being made which, after all, is why VAR was introduced in the first place.
But Collum believed he knew best. Rather than go through the process, he took it upon himself to decide that Johnston’s arm had not moved ‘unnaturally’ and that’s where this whole stinker started.
It was then compounded when someone in the VOR (video operations room) reviewed the entire incident, spotted Sima drifting offside in the build up and then decided to make it known to broadcasters at Sky and BBC Radio Scotland. Because that’s when the whole thing began to smell like an exercise in VAR-ce covering.
Whether he was right or wrong, once Collum had made his decision, there was no requirement for the APP to be raked over retrospectively. The SFA will argue that, by passing this information on, they were providing the kind of transparency and clarity that’s being demanded of them. And they probably have a point.
But, even so, it’s the lapse in time between Collum’s initial decision and the curious intervention of the VOR that remains so troubling and impossible to explain. Also, there is a timestamp which documents how and when this information was released in a live group chat between the officials and BBC Scotland during the match.
The Beeb asked for an explanation on the decision not to award a penalty at 13:17. At 13:24 they were informed of Collum’s reasoning.
And then, at 13:29, came the first mention of a possible offside – a whole 12 minutes after the initial enquiry was made. Whatever way you slice it, Rangers had every right to ask some serious questions of their own. But their Trumpian attempt at rabble rousing has reduced their hand to a busted flush.
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