Some in Scotland do not deserve a good soldier like Anthony Ralston.

On Wednesday night, in the aftermath of Scotland’s game, some of the online discussion on non-Celtic sites was rather remarkable. Remarkable, not because of insightful commentary, but for how it skewed to praise an Ibrox player while finding ways to criticise a Celtic one.

I didn’t start following Scotland until I was in my twenties.

I never really considered myself a Scotland fan. In fact, I preferred, and I’ll be honest about this, the Republic of Ireland national team. Although I’ve always considered myself a patriotic Glasgow nationalist, I had no real interest in my country’s national team for a long time.

When I finally did begin following the team, I heard stories of a distant past where Scotland fans would boo Celtic players, and national coaches hardly featured our players at all. There’s a well-documented history of institutional bias at the SFA. For many years, the SFA frowned upon the idea of picking Celtic players, a fact evident in the shockingly low number of caps won by some of our Lisbon Lions.

However, the Scotland teams I grew up watching were full of Celtic players, with very few from across the city.

There was a time, not that long ago, when you’d see six or seven starters in the Scotland squad who either played for or had recently played for Celtic. It’s a little jarring, I’ve got to admit, to look at the current national side and see so few Celtic players. Of course, there still aren’t many from Ibrox either, but that’s beside the point. Last night was all about praising John Souttar, while others cast about looking for reasons to criticise our own player, Anthony Ralston.

Now, I’ve said my piece on Steve Clarke, and I’m not going into that again.

But if Souttar deserves praise for being part of a backline that kept out the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, then Ralston deserves the same.

After all, he was part of the same backline.

Yet there was an obvious reluctance to give Ralston any credit.

The media seems obsessed with finding a player who can do better than him at right-back, a strange obsession considering the position’s stability. We have Craig Gordon in goal, and nobody is questioning whether his time has passed or if we need a better option.

Why, then, the fixation with Ralston?

Brendan Rodgers has said Ralston will get a lot more game time for Celtic this season, and I don’t know a single Celtic fan who has a problem with that. We all appreciate what seems to be an alien concept elsewhere: Ralston is a model professional and a dependable squad player.

What do I mean by “model pro”?

He works hard, keeps his head down, and gets on with it, regardless of the noise around him. He handles criticism and doubt without complaint, even when it’s plastered across the media in letters ten feet high. When I say he’s a “good soldier,” I mean he never raises a fuss about not playing.

He makes himself available, works hard, and doesn’t complain. He isn’t banging on the manager’s door every week demanding to know why he’s not in the starting eleven. He understands the team-first mentality and the idea of football as a squad game.

The critics—well, not the genuine critics, because it’s okay to critique performance—but those who seem to have a personal vendetta, whether because he’s a Celtic player or for some other reason, they don’t deserve a guy like Ralston.

They don’t deserve a player willing to do his job quietly and without fuss, whenever he’s called upon.

Some people will pick holes in everything Ralston does. You can tell who the media figures are that don’t like him because they scrutinise every misplaced pass, though, in reality, there aren’t many. They’ll search for anything to criticise. I was actually surprised the other day to see Tom English defending him—he’s not a guy who automatically comes to the aid of Celtic players under pressure, but he was spot on in this case.

I’m increasingly frustrated watching the Scotland team.

The manager, the media coverage—it’s all starting to grate. From Callum McGregor having his place in the team questioned when he was still performing at a high level, to Greg Taylor’s position being undermined, to Ralston getting unfair stick, to James Forrest being selected but never played—it wears you down. It’s especially disheartening when you want to see your club’s players shine in the national side, yet the team itself isn’t performing well.

It reminds me of those stories about that time when the Scotland squad was a hostile place for Celtic players, when every selection of one of our players was questioned, when the SFA was reluctant to pick them, and when sections of the fanbase were quick to needle any Celtic player on the pitch.

At least that’s not happening this time around. The Tartan Army seems firmly behind Ralston, as they should be, and most are baffled by the treatment of James Forrest and saddened by the end of Callum McGregor’s international career.

Yet there’s this strange belief among some, like the John Souttar and Connor Barron brigade, that they’re somehow winning.

Undermining someone who normally plays in the Hoops is just another way of making their point.

And I find it ironic that this is all in aid of a club and support base which has no real love for the country in which they live and has zero interest in the betterment of the national team, or the game as a whole, as evidenced by their behaviour towards Inverness fans, which I wrote about earlier this week.

It’s been a disheartening international break, and I, for one, am glad it’s over.

I can’t wait to watch my team take on Aberdeen this weekend.