Ryan Christie has gone public with the details of his 14 days self-isolation which was imposed on him after Scotland international duty.
The Celtic midfielder was ruled to be a close contact of Stuart Armstrong despite keeping a very socially distant 3.8m while challenging his old team-mate on the Play-Station 4.
Christie tested negative six times during self-isolation but that cut no ice with the authorities who forced him out of three internationals and last week’s Glasgow derby.
While the Celtic player was stuck at home he watched Kieran Tierney turn out for Arsenal to add to his frustrations.
Christie is available again for selection but after 14 days stuck at home he has work to do to catch up on fitness with his involvement against AC Milan restricted to 45 minutes.
Explaining the situation, he told The Sun:
When I was on Scotland duty, I was following every single protocol. We’ve done it since June at club level, so it’s not as if we go away for internationals and throw all that in the bin.
It is frustrating when you do that and it still comes back to bite you. I was in the room with Stuart and KT playing Call of Duty, and the crazy thing is we were socially distanced. It wasn’t like we were on one TV or one PlayStation.
One of us was on one side of the room, one was in the middle facing one way, and the other facing a different way.
We had all the headsets on and everything. We weren’t even looking at each other to speak. Before the decision was made, and we were speaking to the government, the Scotland guys measured the distance between the seats.
It was 3.8?metres. In previous camps we were told by the international doctor it was OK to do that. It was very frustrating to have been punished for it. The first few days were very hard, realising I was going to miss a good few games.
When I realised I would miss the Israel game I was gutted. Then I also missed one of the biggest games of the club season. I was just left staring at four walls, and you go through good spells and bad spells.
I had all the stuff delivered to keep up with my fitness, but the hardest part was when the football came on TV. I was thinking, ‘I should be part of this’.
The SFA haven’t made any comment on the breach of protocol which ruled Christie and Tierney out of three international matches at Hampden.