IF YOU are at the centre of a drinking session that gets out of hand while on Scotland duty, then days later give journalists the V-sign at a major international, you cannot expect to escape punishment.
Or can you? Jimmy Johnstone did. The Scottish Football Association took no action against the winger for having to be rescued from a Largs fishing boat at the end of a drunken night – an incident whipped up by a press corps to which he then gestured
in celebrating a 2-0 win over England that his efforts subsequently inspired all of 35 years ago.
The extent to which times have changed, and how sanctimonious the court of public opinion has become, could be one reading of the universal rush to declare a just outcome in Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor being banished both by Scotland and Rangers for indiscretions not dissimilar to Johnstone's.
From his own bitter experience, Joe Harper doesn't subscribe to the theory that a very modern morality tale has been played out this week. Neither does the former Hibs and Aberdeen striker fall into line with a pious populace when it comes to the SFA's decision to no longer consider the two Ibrox players for international selection. Harper knows what it is like to suffer such international exile. He was a member of the so-called Copenhagen Five, a quintet of Scotland players banned for life by the Association following a disturbance that ended with the police piling in to a nightclub in 1975.
Harper and Arthur Graham were later reinstated as it emerged they had been no more than present at trouble Billy Bremner, Willie Young and Pat McCluskey became embroiled in. Still angry about initially being slapped with a life ban, he believes this came about precisely because Johnstone had escaped Scot-free the previous year. Harper considers such a sanction fits very few crimes.
"Whatever happened with Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor, I don't agree with life bans," he says. "Unless you commit bodily harm, these shouldn't be dished out. The actions of the pair were bloody stupid, and their gestures on the bench showed a distinct absence of brain activity.
"But weak management played a part in what kicked the whole saga off. If, as has been said, George Burley was willing to allow them to have a 'bonding session' when they arrived back in their hotel in Amsterdam at four in the morning, then he should have sat down and talked through the Holland game and chatted about Iceland with them.
"That they were allowed to get out of their minds on the drink in a hotel where there would be punters and guests was always going to be a recipe for disaster. There are no similarities with what happened to us Copenhagen. We had finished our work and the manager Willie Ormond said there was no problem with going out for the whole night as long as we were around to catch the flight at 11am.
"Players will drink, that is a fact but it is all about time and place, and when Scotland had lost so heavily and were in the midst of preparing for the Iceland game, the team hotel at Loch Lomond last Sunday morning wasn't the time or place for a session. That turned out to be the case with us in Copenhagen but, unlike the boys last week, that was through no fault of mine or Arthur Graham's. We had broken no rules, took no liberties. "
Lou Macari is another who knows what it is like to receive the rubber ear from the SFA. As with Harper, though, there are no parallels to be drawn between his international banishment and the hoopla of the past week. In the wake of the Argentina '78 debacle, the Manchester United forward criticised the governing body's organisation and choice of hotel in a series of newspaper articles. He told how, after receiving the same soup for three weeks, he asked the kitchen staff if they might not be better ladling it in to the complex's waterless swimming pool.
"I suffered an over-reaction just because I gave an opinion," says the former Celtic manager. "I'm not sure if I was ever officially banned. The SFA put out a sniffy statement that said I wouldn't be inconvenienced again, but I never received confirmation of that in a letter."
Macari believes Ferguson and McGregor have accepted the actions taken against them because, as millionaires in the modern game, they know "what it's like" and the penalties "for stepping out of line". "The focus and scrutiny they are under comes with the rewards available," he says.
A life-long teetotaller, Macari believes the episode confirms a truth others seem loathe to accept. "Football and drink do not go together, no matter how many times people say it is part of the culture," he says.
Macari appreciates why Walter Smith has decided to pass down the heaviest possible sentence on his errant players. "Where you find no discipline, you find no good results," he says. "You can't have a free-for-all, or players thinking they can disregard your instructions. That ends in disaster."
Ferguson and McGregor will be painfully aware of that.
