The back page of a Scottish tabloid caught my eye today. Under a headline “national disgrace” was a picture of Walter Smith. That’s a bit strong, I thought, he can’t be that bad. Then I realised.
There was something distinctly odd about Rangers post-match on Sunday. It could be said that a team heading for a quadruple requiring penalties to defeat a division one team is odd enough in itself but there was a strange reaction from the victorious players. Or rather, there appeared to be a distinct lack of reaction.
They appeared to be too infirm or lacking in energy to rush to congratulate Daniel Cousin, who Smith tried so hard to sell after just a few months as a player. But then there was that very odd post-match interview with Ally McCoist.
Sure, he could be said to have simply been realistic in such a glum – and fairly gracious – response saying that any credit should be attached to St Johnstone. And then he threw in a curious comment about the state of the Hampden surface.
It goes without saying that the condition of a pitch can rarely be judged without walking on it but, given that McCoist wasn’t blaming the pitch for the poor Rangers performance, it was a strange comment.
Walter, however, made everything clear: "It's no excuse for the way we played but Steven's injury was attributable to that and you could see a number of players catching their studs in the ground because it was so dry and uneven."
Really? It looked to my untrained eye that Martin Hardie had stood quite firmly on Steven Naismith’s knee, leaving the boy in obvious pain with TV pictures appearing to show that the force had extended the joint. What a bitterly ironic turn of events – Naismith completely survives the full weight of a man on his knee only to be sent back out to play and collapse minutes later due to nothing other than the incompetence of the Hampden Park ground staff.
We should be thankful to Smith for clearing that up. Otherwise, we might have been forced to conclude that a young player who could expect to have 15 years ahead of him suffered a potentially serious injury, was patched up after a cursory assessment and returned to risk aggravating damage to the ligaments.
We might have concluded that despite having a Belgian international on the bench, Smith was prepared to put the immediate interests of himself and Rangers ahead of the long-term welfare of one of his younger professionals.
We might have thought that the man who was assistant manager at Rangers when Phil Boersma carried Ian Durrant off the pitch on his back despite his having a horrendous rupture to his anterior cruciate ligament would never again take a chance on making a young player’s knee injury worse than it had to be.
But none of those issues need be considered because we have the word of the inscrutable Walter. The PFA have been silent on the issue, though some might have thought that they would expect better protection for professionals. There has been barely a peep from the Scottish media. Will Rangers’ insurers feel the same way? Will Naismith himself or his father who commented that “Stephen’s living my dream” when he signed for Rangers feel that Walter has looked after his boy?
Now we all know that there are two people in this country who will never be criticised and Smith will undoubtedly be knighted by the other one before long.
So it falls to amateurs with blogs to question the words of a man who just a few weeks ago insisted that Kevin Thomson “almost broke his leg” when apparently diving against Celtic. Everyone but Walter and Thomson knew what had really happened.
And, as Smith said at the time: “How can you break your leg if there’s no contact?” Thomson didn’t and there wasn’t. In Naismith’s case, however, we are asked to believe that serious impact on a young player’s knee bore no relation to his later being taken from the field on a stretcher – and by implication that no criticism can be attached to the medical staff or management.
In other words: Walter’s myth.
