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That Scottish football game
Anyone who follows the football of these isles will already know all about this … perhaps anyone outside these isles might not.
There was a title game between Celtic and Hearts teams for the Premiership and, with 30 seconds of regular time left, Celtic were 3-1 up. Fairly straightforward victory, you’d think. Celtic fans invaded the pitch, bringing the game to a (temporary) stop. The refereee should have called a halt until the pitch was cleared and then …
… well, that’s the thing … what then? The ref called the game “ended”, not “abandoned”
A freelance Scot at Lord Toby’s site writes, this morning:
“Hearts have protested about the treatment of their team and staff and the “menacing atmosphere” they had to endure. They have also called for “the strongest possible action to protect player safety and the integrity of the Scottish game”.
The last part of that sentence may be a coded signal that they do not accept the result and are putting the SPFL on notice. The police are investigating the allegations of assault.”
Yes, dear reader, the Celtic crowd started menacing and assaulting the Hearts players on the pitch … during the game.
“In response, the SFPL has insisted the game was ended appropriately and have tweeted its congratulations to Celtic. The league has stressed that the referee said the game was ended, not abandoned, and it has not been recorded as such. A report will be submitted, but I’d be surprised if the SPFL deviates from this position now.”
And more to the point:
“Here is the problem: referees cannot simply end the game early. The exact wording of the law is “additional time may be added but not reduced”. If a referee is forced to curtail a match before time, for whatever reason (weather, floodlight failure, medical emergency, violence) the game has not been ended but abandoned.
Thus, Celtic vs Hearts was not ended naturally, but abandoned, unnaturally, due to a pitch invasion by home fans. According to SPFL rules, the consequence of that is a victory for the opposition, or a replay.”
Interestingly for me, last night I was watching that McEnroe incident when he defaulted at the Australian Open tennis for “code violations” (1990). At his fourth violation for bad manners, he was dismissed from the game. He had calculated that he had one violation left to go but the Tennis Federation had reduced it to three before this game and not “informed him”. That was it.
Back to the Hearts v Celtic thing … the SPFL had acted outside its own rules, rules which were there for a reason. To an English temperament, this was highly unfair, outrageous in fact, more FIFA than British, esp. English.
But this was Scotland, warrnt it? This was where a Moose Limb was shoved in as FM, where Sturgeon had plans that every Scottish child would have a State Mentor, far worse than in the former USSR. It’s ingrained bullying, as in English Public Schools of yore and fear … it doth rule.
Entrenched enforcement of the unfair.
For those outside this culture, a good idea can be had by watching Michael Palin’s school bully episode. With an edge of course, because this is Scotland in this case … a special kind of bullying. Not American military college “hazing”.
Yet another complication is that the worst rivalry in Scottish football is Celtic v Rangers, which is basically Micks versus proddy boys or Catholics v Protestants, which is also behind the Northern Irish “Troubles”, the bombings and shootings. History tells us that the Scots had quite an influence on Northern Ireland.
Throughout my upbringing, the Catholics were seen as rough and not given to non-violent methods … the Protestants had to counter that somehow. Much of Australia was, before the invasion, Irish Catholic, e.g. Ned Kelly. It was, in fact, behind England v Oz Test Matches and the Rodney Marsh style “sledging”, though I’m not sure he was Catholic.
Also, you may have heard of the violence of nuns on children (watch The Blues Bros).
So let’s just say there’s nothing unusual in any of this. Which does not make it right. Injustice in the past four decades or so has become entrenched … see Farage’s indifference to pack raped girls and Rupert taking up their case.
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