The Celtic Boss Naming And Praising Willie Collum Yesterday Was Not Coincidental.

Yesterday, Brendan Rodgers did his usual pre-match interview, except that this time it wasn’t a typical one. It wasn’t typical because the moment is not typical. We’re getting to the end of a crazy campaign, one that hasn’t always been enjoyable, one that has, at times, been painful to sit through. For all that, we’re still in with a shout and that’s what we have to keep thinking about.

From the moment he returned to this club, Rodgers has been under siege. It is only lately that he has, quite literally, came out swinging and I expect him to be doing that all the way to the end now, however this season pans out. He knows he has to.

Sitting in front of the hacks yesterday, for the first time since he heard he was being disciplined for his comments at the end of the game last week, Rodgers could have been forgiven for imposing an iron clad rule on the assembled sportswriters, to only ask about the coming game. But of course, he couldn’t do that as they would only have stomped their feet.

So of course, he was questioned about everything else. The questions on the actual match we’re to embark on were few and far between. Was he sorry for what he said the other day? That was one of the questions, and he said he was not. They tried to get him to open up on the Abada situation, in a classic piece of fishing for a story. He gave them nothing.

It was an interview characterised by Rodgers in reactive mode. The hacks had him on the ropes, but not in any way that was going to deliver a knockout. Like a good tactical fighter, he kept his guard up and didn’t take any really serious blow. But he didn’t get to talk much about football, and he didn’t really get a chance to do any counter punching of his own.

Except … yeah, he kind of did, but it was a sneaky one, one that they didn’t see coming and if some of them are a little too stunned to get the message let me relay it to them now; his mentioning, and praising, Willie Collum as an example of good refereeing was not an accident. It was not a freakish shot that somehow hit the mark. It was timed, and aimed.

Mentioning Collum did three things; it was a dig at Ibrox and Hampden. It was a reminder to the media that they did and said nothing to stand up for that guy and it was a clear message to the disciplinary committee that the club intends to bring Collum up in the manager’s defence. It was, in short, a masterful intervention and I liked it a lot.

First, the dig at Hampden and Ibrox is obvious. In naming Collum as one of the refs he respects he’s reminding Hampden that he doesn’t usually criticise refs and telling Ibrox that we have no problem with the guy they’ve tried to have banned from their games. And if you detect in that Rodgers also obliquely suggesting that Collum should be getting more “big games” then you’ve read the signal five-by-five because Rodgers is basically doing just that and asking “when he’s getting given another league game involving their club?”

That alone would be, as they say, worth the admission money.

That he said it in front of the press is him telling them that the drum-banging and the invoking of “conspiracy theories” is a bit rich coming from the people who overwhelming took Ibrox’s side after the Alastair Johnston incident and poured scorn on Collum and it’s a reminder, too, that they allowed some of the ex-Ibrox pros to openly smear him as a cheat. They would have gone right along with that too had the Ibrox club not crassly, and stupidly, put its demand that he get no more of their games in the public domain via their fan media outlets, elevating it to a dangerous level which neither Celtic nor Rodgers has done in this case.

The hypocrisy of the hacks is deplorable at times, it really is.

Finally, there’s simply no missing that Rodgers is very plainly drawing attention to Collum because our club intends to use that man’s name as one of the central planks of our case. Rodgers knows that in raising this he’s giving the SFA a chance give Collum a game involving the Ibrox club before the hearing, although it’s so blatant that they’ve benched him that anything they do now is going to be too little and far too late.

Do you want to know how bad it is, and how blatant? An SPFL season has 38 games. Willie Collum has not officiated in a league game involving the Ibrox club since the last game of last year. Ten league matches have been played since then, more than a quarter of the season and not only has he not been on the pitch, but he’s not been in the VAR room either.

John Beaton, in the same spell, has refereed them twice and so too have Dickinson and Muir. McLean, Robertson, McDermid and Walsh have all refereed them once. Andrew Dallas has been on VAR three times, Robertson in addition to refereeing a game has been on VAR twice, Greg Aitken has been on VAR twice and Steven McLean and McDermid, in addition to refereeing a game apiece have also been on VAR once, and there have of course been assorted others over the course of those ten games as assistants and seconding the VAR guys.

Willie Collum has not been anywhere near any of those matches in an official capacity, which when you consider that he’s one of the top refs in the country is both troubling and astonishing.

More than one quarter of all the SPFL games that will take part over the course of a season have come and gone since the game in which he made that decision against the Ibrox club and he hasn’t been involved at all. Ten matches in a row.

And Celtic will, without a doubt, make good use of data like that, and that was the message that Brendan Rodgers was very definitely sending the SFA yesterday when he sat in front of the media and praised the excellent refereeing skills of one Willie Collum.

We should know, of course, because if you think Collum is simply being sidelined because people at the SFA no longer think he’s up to the job, guess what? He’s referred one and been on VAR for one involving Celtic over the same period of time.

I’ll tell you this; there’s no way we’re going to go ten league games without seeing John Beaton. That’s just not going to happen. Nevertheless, Rodgers has made his play and I think it was a good one.

Let’s see how the SFA responds to it.

Giving Willie Collum a role in a game involving the Ibrox club before our hearing is a near certainty now … and that’s how you’ll know that his sidelining has been very deliberate and sent a clear message to the rest.

Our own message is equally clear.

Whatever the SFA does now, we’ve got our guns loaded. It only remains to be seen how far we’re willing to go if we don’t get the verdict we want.