It seems that David Turnbull will not be subjected to an SFA disciplinary for his silly kick out at an Aberdeen player on Wednesday night. The referee booked him at the time for it, which was a fair verdict for what amounted to a daft moment.
In order to discipline him further the ref would have to say he didn’t properly see the incident. Good luck with that one, since TV pictures show him in a perfect position.
That nothing incident does not merit the amount of scrutiny it has had in some quarters, far less the foaming response of certain individuals in the media who wanted it viewed by the discipline panel in advance of a much harsher sentence.
Celtic would not have reacted well had this been done.
Imagine the gall of some of these people in wanting to see one of our footballers raked over the coals.
Few media outlets have commented on the absurd time it took the SFA to complete their disciplinary process over the Ibrox Five, and yet they wanted Turnbull banned?
The SFA would have really opened a can of worms here had they decided to proceed with a case. Not only would the ref have had serious questions to answer but it would have put the whole system under ever greater levels of scrutiny.
Let’s not kid ourselves, it should be under scrutiny anyway and Celtic should be the ones standing over the microscope. But it’s the media’s role in this which should concern the hierarchy inside our club.
The press increasingly believes that it should be playing judge and jury on stuff like this and it is not the first time this season various outlets have tried to have our players banned.
A Celtic fan group has sent an open letter to Dominic McKay today; I’ve got a full review of that open letter to put up later, but this is an example of some of what they’ve raised.
A blatant effort to make trouble for us for no other reason than they can.
The SFA review systems works for the most part, but every one of these frivolous complaints has to be looked at and the press blatantly takes advantage of that.
It’s one of many areas which needs to be reviewed and which our CEO should be concerned with.