Today an SFA disciplinary panel has cleared Ryan Jack over his deserved red card against Kilmarnock. I knew that was going to happen. I knew the day he was laughably picked for the Scotland squad that he would not get a domestic ban.
Because that would be embarrassing for the governing bodies. Let’s be honest, the only thing of note that Ryan Jack has achieved so far as a Sevco player is to have been sent off so many times there is talk that they now print red cards with his name on them to save refs the time having to get their pencils out. If bad discipline warranted Scotland caps then he would have earned one. He has done the sum total of nil to deserve it otherwise.
His winning the appeal is farcical.
The linesman had it spot it on, and the only disgrace was the decision to show him the yellow card instead of a straight red in the first place. TV footage clearly shows him acting like a ned. He is another in a long line of players playing out of Ibrox who has been given an appeal panel reprieve when he clearly committed an offence.
I have stopped looking for consistency from these people.
The only thing you can rely on with them is that they will find new ways to surprise you.
They don’t get everything wrong, of course, no-one does.
In the same hearing, Stephen Robinson has been cleared to face Celtic and that’s a good decision because his getting sent to the stand in the first place was patently ridiculous, and was only done so the officials could feel able to send Caixinha off at the same time, even though he had manifestly been asking for it the whole day.
Robinson was a victim of our refereeing double-standard. This idea of refs “balancing out decisions” which has no place on a football pitch at all. I am delighted that he will not be prevented from having his day on the touchline alongside Brendan.
But the Jack decision is typically honking, as is the idea of giving him an international call up. Even Sevco fans are baffled by that, wondering what he’s done to merit it as they’ve seen nothing from him on the pitch for them so far. It reeks of a decision taken to throw the club a bone; if everyone’s fit there are a half dozen players who would start before him, so his inclusion in the squad is, on paper, nothing but a sop to the Ibrox club in the way including Lee Wallace used to be.
In truth, I could care less about it; I won’t be cheering on Scotland whilst the national team is in the hands of a misogynist and bigot. Malky McKay would be a stain on any other association, but this is the SFA and they have bigger stains than this to wash off.