CELTIC CONSPIRACY THEORIES: THE FACTS KRIS BOYD IGNORED
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- 4 minutes ago
- 4 min read
There are few things more joyous in football than an unexpected last-minute winner. Especially if it’s a penalty, especially if it’s in any way debatable, and especially when your rivals have already got the “get it up ‘ye” tweets out there for the world to see.
Of course, the above scenario crystalized beautifully for Celtic last night in the 7th minute of added time at Fir Park. The only thing more enjoyable than watching Kelechi Iheanacho’s ice-cool kick hit the bottom corner of the net was the totally inevitable and utterly delicious meltdowns from the usual suspects that followed. Naturally, Celtic Conspiracy Theories are all over every media outlet and raging fan blog this morning.
However, as usual, amidst all the bluster, the faux outrage, and the indignance of Kris Boyd and company, there are always cold, hard facts that blow their crackpot theories to pieces. Of course, these facts are conveniently glossed over by the outrage peddlers on TV and online.
Celtic Conspiracy Theories Hit Overdrive: We’re Winning and They’re Hurting
So, I’ll save them the trouble of actually doing their jobs, and lay out just why Celtic’s win last night, whilst not a barnstorming performance, was deserved. It was the result of hard graft, indomitable spirit and sheer bloody-minded determination. In other words, the characteristics that always seem to kick in for Martin O’Neill Celtic sides when talent alone isn’t enough to get the job done.
Let’s start by tackling the big orange and maroon elephant in the room: that penalty decision.
It was a clear penalty kick and there actually multiple reasons why it was so.
Despite Kris Boyd’s aggressive protestations to the contrary last night, close up TV footage shows that the Motherwell player clearly had his hand in front of his head as the ball met this mass of head and hand collectively.
Boyd claimed that it was “physically impossible” for a ball to fly out of play at the pace and angle that this one did if it hit a player’s hand rather than his head.
Here’s the thing though, When your hand is directly in front of your head, as was the case here, the ball will rebound with an almost equal force as it would if it had hit your head alone.
Still, I guess it is a bit unfair to expect a “pundit” still struggling with multiple syllable words to be able to grasp the basic fundamentals of Newtonian physics, much less apply their logical outcomes to a game of football.
Of course, in typical Kris Boyd fashion, he didn’t just go after Celtic on this point alone. It was the scattergun approach: fling enough of the proverbial brown stuff at Celtic and hope some of it sticks.
Boyd also questioned why Kelechi Iheanacho was given time to convert the penalty in the 97th minute when only 5 minutes of time were added at the end of the 90.
Well, again, this isn’t even high school physics, this is primary school level maths.
You see Kris, if the game is held up for a VAR check, it usually takes two or three minutes. And there’s this curious little subsect of mathematics that you might not be familiar with called “addition and subtraction”.
So, the VAR check subtracted 2-3 minutes from our game time, but since the clock didn’t stop the referee had to do a wee sum and add those 2-3 minutes back onto the clock before he could finish the game.
Hence why, we ended up playing 97 minutes last night instead of the pre-planned 95 minutes.
Going back to the penalty itself, I saw other pundits last night deploying the “hand is in a natural position” defense.
To cut a long story short, Micheal Stewart and others argued that the Motherwell player couldn’t help but have his hand over his head, because of the presence of Auston Trusty.
There is just one problem with this line of argument. Go back and look at the full incident. Why does the Motherwell player’s hand end up in this clearly unnatural position?
It’s because he made the choice while jumping for the aerial challenge to attempt to lodge his elbow somewhere in Auston Trusty’s collarbone.
It is the rebounding of the players elbow and indeed his entire lower arm off of Trusty’s torso that forces his hand into the position it is in. Therefore, it’s not a natural position, because the position his hand was in only came to be because he attempted to foul his opponent.
So, it’s a penalty for handball, and it’s also potentially a penalty due to the foul committed on Auston Trusty.
Take your pick guys, but both of these things happened, and collectively that’s why the foul was given.
We only have a couple of days now before our final, ultimate showdown with Hearts. We have home advantage, but we cannot afford anything less than a win. Celtic must be prepared. I fully expect something, or perhaps a multitude of things along the lines of “honest mistakes” from the referee on Saturday to attempt to “balance things out”.
Celtic need to be good enough on Saturday that this kind of cheating won’t matter.
We need to put Hearts to the sword, so that no referee, no professional moaner in the media or anyone else can put our championship win in any doubt.
We need to seriously up our game from last night for this to happen. However, there is no better place to do so than Celtic Park. If remain hopeful, if perhaps not overly confident. Keep the faith.
