Christmas may be just around the corner, but there’s been little festive cheer surrounding Scottish football of late. The headlines have been dominated over the last week or so by what is referred to these days as simulation – we traditionalists still prefer to call it diving, of course.
There’s been a royal furore about the case involving Rangers winger Sone Aluko, who won a contentious penalty at Ibrox against Dunfermline Athletic last week. Despite the penalty award – which turned out to be the winning goal for the home side in a 2-1 win – television footage appeared to support suggestions that Aluko had gone down all too easily in the box.
Without any contact whatsoever from an opponent he had, in other words, dived. Conned the referee. But players seem to forget that cameras are everywhere these days, capturing every detail from any conceivable angle to be replayed a million times over.
The case was reported in accordance with the SFA’s newly introduced disciplinary system, a fast-track tribunal process initiated by the SFA following the McLeish report’s recommendations (Henry, not Alex).
The new “Compliance Officer”, a chap called Vincent Lunny, who reported Aluko for “simulation” on this occasion, instigates decisions on which incidents should be progressed for review. The panel was convened when Rangers decided to challenge the action.
On the basis that Aluko clearly did dive – that the winger threw himself to the turf quite untouched was undeniably crystal clear - Rangers’ decision to proceed to the judicial panel must have been predicated on the likelihood of receiving a similarly favourable outcome to a previous high profile case.
On that occasion Hibs’ Gary O’Connor was cleared of any wrong doing by the panel, despite television footage showing the striker flying through the air with the greatest of ease to win a penalty, with no opponent within even close proximity! O’Connor’s dive in a league match against St Johnstone was frankly outrageous, but he got off scot-free.
As a result, Rangers boss Ally McCoist raged when the panel – selected from a group comprising former referees, players, managers and legal representatives – decided that Aluko’s dive warranted a two-match suspension.
Even those who don’t exactly have Rangers’ best interests at heart would have found SFA Chief Executive Stewart Regan’s insistence that no two cases are the same, and therefore must be treated on their own merits, to be more than a little dubious. Any disciplinary process must surely be seen to be consistent in terms of how it is applied, and whatever your views on the cases highlighted, the fact remains that both O’Connor and Aluko dived, and so the punishment should have been the same in each case.
McCoist also directed some of his ire at Lunny. Claiming that, given he’s not got a background in football – the SFA’s Compliance Officer is a former crown office and Procurator Fiscal lawyer – he’s ill-placed when it comes to making football-related decisions.
His mood won’t exactly have been improved by the fact that a Rangers player, Steven Naismith, was the first player to receive a ban under the SFA’s new procedures, back in August for elbowing an opponent.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the new disciplinary process, however, most football observers will agree on one thing – the need to eradicate diving from the game. It’s one thing for players to go down easily under the most gentle of challenges, but some players are taking it to a new level.
Spanish football, for instance, is rightly lauded for its technical prowess, and any fan of the beautiful game must admire the artistry regularly on view during La Liga fixtures. But the flip side to this is the sight of players theatrically hitting the turf and then – after a quick glance towards the referee – rolling over a few times for good measure. It actually gets to the point where it spoils the game.
When the Scotland national side lost a last-minute highly dubious penalty to the Czech Republic in a recent Euro 12 qualifier at Hampden in October, many Scottish players were reported in the press saying that diving was alien within the game here in Scotland, and was a phenomenon exclusive to other countries. The examples of Messrs O’Connor and Aluko, however, would tend to suggest we’re not exactly immune from the curse of diving.
Of course, the c-word then gets bandied about. Cheating (to clarify!). And rightly so, I guess, given that this is precisely what it is. According to my dictionary, to cheat is to “practise deceit to gain advantage,” so diving must come into that category.
Of course, we fans are a fickle lot, and this was perhaps never truer than when some Rangers fans called a radio football phone-in programme the other day to lambast the ban handed out to Aluko.
Those who elected to criticise the SFA, then admitted that they were pleased with Aluko’s dive because it meant their team won the match, they may wish to reflect on what that tells us about their mentality. Football isn't in a good place when apologists for diving are at the fore and blinded by the win at all costs quest for three points.