Provinical club meets Old Firm team. The Old Firm team struggles to break down the provinicial clubs organized defence early on. The provinical club then threatens to...god forbid...outplay the Old Firm team!
But never fear - over the horizon, on his white stallion, comes the handsome prince, or rather, the referee, to rescue the Old Firm team by awarding either a contentious penalty, or a contentious red card. If he is a true Prince Charming, he will manage to do both at the same time.
On Saturday, Stevie O'Reilly didn't need to come up with a ridiculous spot-kick decision, though had it taken much longer than the sixty-one minutes that Celtic required to break the deadlock, there is little doubt in the mind of the Inverness support that he would have duly obliged. In the end, it transpired that the obscene decision to dismiss Greg Tansey for use of 'an elbow' on Georgios Samaras proved sufficient.
Terry Butcher summed up the incident in one beautiful soundbite - "deadly assault by fingernail". One hopes that, given his apparent knowledge of the human anatomy, Mr O'Reilly's day job is not as an orthopaedic surgeon.
If only it had been a one-off incident, it would be reasonable to dismiss this as a human error, an understandable mistake. But the referee's handling of the match warrants further inspection - two 'handbags moments' during the match, both of which resulted in a yellow for the Caley player and only a long chat for the Celtic player (if one was feeling particularly cruel, they might suggest that Mr O'Reilly was asking the Celtic player for his autograph and phone number), and two gross pieces of time wasting by Celtic players to break up Caley attacks, one of which saw the ball booted 60 yards up the pitch several seconds after a free kick had been awarded.
The bottom line is this: if Samaras had fouled Tansey in the same way, do you think he would have been sent off? As was pointed out by many after this match, anyone who was told 'this match was decided by a controversial refereeing decision' would have very quickly bet their mortgage on Celtic being favoured.
It's worth noting that, though the referees are meant to stay on the pitch after the final whistle had been blown to make sure the players have left the field of play, Mr O'Reilly was off down the tunnel long before any of the Celtic team, walking so briskly that he looked like a man who had just realized he had left the gas on.
Sadly, it's not the first time this has happened to Caley Thistle this season; in August, Euan Norris got Rangers out of a hole by giving a very contentious penalty and sending off Caley's Ross Tokely to boot; just to rub salt into the wound, he awarded a second, even more ridiculous, spot kick later on.
And it's not just us that are suffering. Celtic have not won a league game for two months against a side who have finished with eleven men. Five players have been sent off against them so far in this campaign. Their ratio of fouls to yellow cards is twice as high as any other team (including Rangers) - this suggests Celtic have to commit twice as many fouls to get a yellow card as their opponents. Last year, for all their posturing about bias against them from the Powers That Be, they set a new record for penalties won in a SPL season.
Sadly, the scenario of Saturday is so common that, pre-kickoff, we were all joking in the stands about how, unless Celtic were in front after half an hour, they were bound to get some help from the officials.
The game itself, then, was about as much fun as being punched in the face repeatedly by Rocky Marciano. The whole experience was not enhanced by the usual posturing of the Celtic support, several of whom decided to grace my walk away from Caledonian Stadium after the match with a chorus of pro-IRA chants. They had already disgusted me enough with their bizarre banner 'Our music has survived famine and oppression', which they unfurled at kickoff. I hope there is some sort of subtle meaning to this display that has escaped me - for it seems on the outside to be an attempt to justify the offensive songs that plague so many of their matches.
Besides, judging by the waistlines sported by the majority of the away support, the closest they've come to experiencing a famine was when the local chippy ran out of curry sauce.
If there is any justice in Scottish football, Tansey's red card will be rescinded on appeal, Caley will receive an apology from Stevie O'Reilly (or, failing that, he will be sent to officiate games in Stenhousemuir and Coatbridge for a few weeks), and Georgios Samaras will be fined for clearly feigning injury in order to get a fellow professional sent off.
Sadly, even the first of those is far from probable, given Inverness' prior experience trying to overturn spurious red cards this season.
And yes, for those who are asking, I am still bitter as hell about the whole damn fiasco.
L.
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