POWDERPUFF Rangers star Joe Garner is a poor excuse for a football hardman

[ian1964 10,547]

says Bill Leckie

 

Garner's cringe-worthy split-second "headbutt" incident with Aberdeen's Ryan Jack summed him up perfectly

 

YOU can be a hardman or you can be a coward. You can’t be both.

 

Today, a cringeworthy split-second in the increasingly-irritating Scottish football career of Joe Garner summed that up perfectly.

 

How many times must we put up with pea-hearts like him trying to get fellow pros sent off by collapsing in a heap, pretending to have been head-butted?

 

More to the point, how many times must it happen before refs start stamping it out with red cards for diving?

 

We saw it the other week when Morton striker Kudus Oyenuga pretended Darren McGregor of Hibs had given him a Leith kiss.

 

We saw it not so long before that when Joey Barton threw himself in a bid to ruin non-league frontman Matt Rhead’s big day in an FA Cup tie at Burnley.

 

Let’s face it, the list of similar offences is as long as Peter Shilton’s arm.It’s happening week after week all over the world. And it MUST be stopped.

 

I mean, for all that Ryan Jack shouldn’t be giving Garner the chance to go down, what’s the mindset when the “victim” did what he did at Pittodrie?What’s he trying to achieve?

 

In the days when football had its share of ACTUAL hardmen, the only purpose served by going nose to nose would have been to stand your ground and make the other fella back down.

 

But now? Sorry, but the message the old confront-and-crumple sends out is a pitiful one indeed.

For a start, it’s the last thing this fixture needed.

 

Aberdeen at home to Rangers is powderkeg enough without some powderpuff play-actor making it all kick off out of nothing.

 

More than that, though, what does it say to your team-mates if they see you’re prepared to risk everything for the sake of being a snidey wee s***e?

 

Do you really think they look at you thinking you’re someone they’d want with them in the trenches?

No chance.

 

If Garner had seen red for his nonsense — and he should have — it would have left them a man short just four minutes in, even if some might say having him on the park left them two men short.

 

Garner’s a sneaky player.

 

He loves leaving the foot in, as he did later in the first half on Dons keeper Joe Lewis, but he can’t handle it being dished back out.

 

It’s a character flaw just about acceptable in someone like Diego Costa, when he also scores 20 a season in the Premier League, but not in someone who’s managed five in a bang-average Scottish top flight.

 

It’s no coincidence Rangers cut loose and took the home side apart once he’d been subbed, because he draws focus to himself rather than the team effort, he gives off a negative energy they don’t need.

 

Even then, mind, you couldn’t have seen THAT result coming.

 

At 0-0, the only thing Pedro Caixinha could be truly proud of was the bravery of Rangers’ defending and it seemed the best they could manage was a battling point.

 

How the game all turned round so spectacularly, then, will surely live with everyone at Aberdeen for a long time, because they simply went to bits.

 

To be suckered with that opener from Kenny Miller is one thing — but then to cave the way they did, to make the basic errors they did for a second, a third and very nearly a fourth?

 

Well, all Derek McInnes can hope is that it’s a one-off aberration and not the start of a re-run of the hell they went through last year.

 

When they went to Fir Park on March 19 they were a point behind leaders Celtic and nine ahead of Hearts in third.

 

But six defeats in their final eight games left them 15 off the title and going into the summer on a proper downer.

 

This morning, they still have a nine-point cushion over Rangers and this was their first home blip in yonks.

 

But the warning signs were there in those final, astonishing 10 minutes.

 

It was awful, and they simply can’t allow the same to happen again. Or that really WOULD be a dramatic collapse.

[der Berliner 3,402]

Now you have given it to us and Garner with all barrells glowing, Feeling better now? We do feel your pain.

[26th of foot 5,925]

Bill Leckie - a poor excuse for a Lothario.

 

Bill, I suspect you are forgetting those days of internet dating profiles, a self proclaimed hard man!

 

Snigger.

[der Berliner 3,402]

Sidenote, despite some rather strange points made by the red-glassed faction on Sportscene / BT ...

 

Possession %: 54-46

Shots: 10-10

On target: 5-6

[JFK-1 1,690]

Easy solution if he's so tormented. Collar Garner and tell him to his face what a pussy he is.

[Bearman 9]

Easy solution if he's so tormented. Collar Garner and tell him to his face what a pussy he is.

 

Garner would throw himself to the floor if truth be told.

 

Leckie is just doing what Liewell demands...another filthy yahoo with a begging bowl.

[JFK-1 1,690]

No one can equate Garner the man to Garner the player trying to draw the attention of the referee to a situation which in my view should have been a red card. Calling him a coward for trying to gain an advantage for his team from a situation that was indeed a red card scenario is way over the top and outside what should be expected from a sports journalist.

 

He was indisputably deliberately head butted and that's violent conduct under any interpretation of the rules. Was it enough to cause severe injury? No but the rules don't require that. Take a look at it. Can see it early in this clip.

 

[StuGers 477]

So Leckie, why is it that after all those examples you've given, do you only feel the need to write a ramble after you have judged a Rangers player to do it? Funny that eh?

[the gunslinger 3,366]

You have to go down to make the ref make a decision. Its a red card all day long.

 

 

[Uilleam 5,600]

Bill Leckie is a poor excuse for a football writer.

 

However, he does keep on message: make Garner's 'behaviour' the story, rather than the footnote it is.