COMING OUT of Ibrox last night there was much indignation surrounding the sending-off of Madjid Bougherra, their fine defender whose solidity at the back has been the very rock on which they have built their championship bid.
The facts of the Bougherra case are these: he slid into a challenge for the ball with Jamie Langfield just before the end of the first half, during which his studs came up off the turf and caught the Aberdeen goalkeeper in the face. Nobody disputes t
hat.
Stuart Dougal, it would appear, was intending to play on until his eye was drawn to his linesman, Graham Chambers. The linesman, in Walter Smith's words, told Dougal that Bougherra had deliberately kicked Langfield in the face, an allegation that drew a bitter response from the Rangers manager. He called the decision to show Bougherra a red card "absolutely incredible". But it wasn't incredible at all.
At best, it was a marginal call. If a guy slides in with studs showing, it's a dangerous tackle and it's open to interpretation as a sending-off offence. Bougherra wasn't a horribly wronged man yesterday. He wasn't the victim of a refereeing atrocity. He was a guy who came out the wrong side of a tight decision. Period. Earlier on, Kyle Lafferty came out the right side of a decision. He cheated. Let's call it straight. He conned the referee. Then he made it worse by appearing to wink at a team-mate when the red card was flashed at Charlie Mulgrew.
Rangers should think carefully before they climb aboard their high horse. If they want Bougherra freed to play on video evidence against Dundee United on Sunday then by extension they should be prepared to see Lafferty banned also on video evidence. Fair's fair, right?
The Ibrox club wouldn't be the first football club – or the last – to develop a siege mentality. Right now, everybody's against them. Smith is normally super cool in these situations but even he is seeing everything as black and white these days. For instance, the controversy of the goal that wasn't at Easter Road during the week. Smith and the legions of Rangers people are completely certain that the ball was over the line. You couldn't persuade them otherwise if you stood there for a month in front of the televison watching endless slow motion replays. They are categoric. It was a goal. And their support are certain in another way. They were cheated. They were robbed.
Who had the worst job in Britain last week? Not the squirming members of the House of Commons trying to explain their inexplicable expenses claims. Martin Cryans, the linesman at Easter Road, had it far worse. He had a split second to decide whether the ball was over or not. He wasn't sure. He couldn't have been. He ruled it out and now he's a cheat. Smith said about that incident: "You're either pro-Rangers or anti-Rangers". This was barmy and reflected the pressure he's under right now. You can't hold the view that the ball probably wasn't over the line without being branded bias against the Ibrox club? It was a strange remark.
The real problem on Wednesday was not Cryans but Nacho Novo, who spurned good chance after good chance. And the problem yesterday was not Chambers but Bougherra who slid into a situation that always had the potential to go badly wrong. Smith has every right to be disappointed and frustrated but if he points the finger at Chambers for the Bougherra call then he's only reminding everyone of the other call the linesman made, the one that saw the innocent Mulgrew sent off because of a piece of disgraceful behaviour from one of Smith's own players.
Mulgrew was the victim yesterday. Not Bougherra.
WITH THE greatest respect to Gary Caldwell, who will collect the Scottish Football Writers' player of the year award tonight, and to Scott Brown, who has already scooped the players' player of the year gong, and to Madjid Bougherra, my own choice as the top man of the season, there is another guy who really should be getting a mention here. Maybe even getting a piece of crystal or silverware or whatever it is the decorated ones are given these days.
This player doesn't play for a big club but his achievement has been enormous. The person in question is Kevin Kyle. He won't win any awards – beyond all the internal accolades at Kilmarnock, that is – but nobody can claim the deeds of Caldwell and Brown are any more impressive than those of the beanpole striker with an unerring eye for goal.
Since his move from Hartlepool in January, Kyle has played 11 games for Killie and has scored seven goals. For a team tormented by a fear of the drop that's a strike-rate that's as impressive as anything Kris Boyd has done. More than that, six of those goals have come in his last three games, when the stakes could not have been higher. What do you hope for as a fan? You hope that when things are getting unbearably nervous for your team that somebody will elevate themselves above the anxiety and dig you out of a hole.
Kyle has scored seven goals in his last four games against teams also fighting like hell to avoid relegation. Killie are out of it now thanks to the three he got in the 3-0 victory over Falkirk, the one he got in the 1-1 draw against Falkirk again, the two he got the other night in the 2-1 win over St Mirren and the winner he got yesterday against Inverness. Add the one he got in the 1-1 draw against St Mirren back in January and his goals have been directly responsible for eight points. That's the difference between survival and not. By that token you have to wonder was there a better signing all season than Kyle? The man deserves an honour of some description.
TO PARAPHRASE Rowan Atkinson's smart-arse creation, Edmund Blackadder, golf's rulemakers are about as progressive as an asthmatic ant – carrying some heavy shopping. The game is full of silly laws that must be followed on pain of disqualification. For example last week in Ireland Francesco Molinari was chucked out of the Irish Open because he mistakenly put a double-bogey six on his card at the 12th hole at Baltray when it should have been the 13th hole. Michael Hoey was also disqualified – in fact he disqualified himself – when he put one club too many in his bag – 15 instead of the allowed 14.
The rules here are black and white. Neither player did anything intentionally wrong but both were removed from the competition. Now consider the case of Kenny Perry in the play-off at the FBR Open back in February. Perry can be seen improving the lie of his ball in the rough; buried one minute, visible the next thanks to a little help from the head of Perry's wedge. Perry was exonerated. No case to answer said the authorities. Why? Because the game of golf wouldn't accept that he'd done it intentionally. They have no stomach to even consider the possibility that somebody may have cheated.
And so we go back to Molinari and Hoey. Did the Italian intentionally put a six in the wrong box? Did Hoey intentionally put an extra club in his bag? Hardly. In golf it seems like you have more chance of being excused for a dodgy use of your wedge than absent-minded use of your pencil. It stinks.
The full article contains 1286 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
