So the Ibrox Five lost their appeals. Not that this was any kind of surprise.
They will now miss games at the tail end of a season that is already over.
As punishments go this is more of a pat on the back than even a slap on the wrist. It is toothless.
As regular readers will know, I did a piece the other day which highlighted how long this has all taken.
In Bolingoli’s case it was 19 days between the incident and the ban kicking in; here we have a case which has, somehow, taken three times longer … sixty-seven days to reach a conclusion, in which time Patterson has played in three competitions.
Yes, some of that is down to the Ibrox club’s flagrant gaming of the system in making the most frivolous appeal I think I’ve ever witnessed and based on the most ludicrous premise.
But the SFA has allowed this farce to drag on far longer than it could have, far longer than they ever should have permitted.
It is their systems which are up for question here.
It is their disciplinary set-up which allowed this to go on and on and on, making a mockery of the regulations and even the law of the land.
The rules for dealing with these matters are amongst the most serious ever put in place … they are literally a matter of life and death, and the SFA has let one club scorn them.
Every club in the land is entitled to know what was so special about this situation which merited this colossal waste of time and doubtless resources only to arrive at a conclusion that was obvious, and certain, from the moment the club admitted the offence to them.
Bear in mind, we’re not talking here about some incident in a game that the ref missed and which has to be scrutinised from a hundred camera angles, or even some breach involving the illegal registration of contracts which requires legal interpretations and other such complicated factors.
The SFA wrote a set of regulations to cover breaches of the government’s health protocols and these Ibrox players broke those rules and we know they did because the police cited them for it.
They didn’t just breach the guidelines; they broke the law.
The facts were not in dispute. Their guilty was not in the slightest question. This was open and shut.
Celtic is not the only club to have been harshly punished during the global health emergency. Tonight Ibrox released a statement full of wailing and self-pity and criticising the SFA for punishing them at all.
They weren’t punished though. They were allowed to get off here. The games these players are banned for hardly matter at all.
This whole thing has been a sham, and Celtic must get to the bottom of it.