Neil Lennon has taken Nicola Sturgeon to task over throwing the phrase ‘R and R’ at Celtic as she criticised the club’s decision to go on a training trip to Dubai.
The Celtic boss used the phrase during a post-match interview with Sky after the defeat at Ibrox on January 2 ahead of the flight to Dubai.
The First Minister makes a virtue of her lack of interest in football, presumably relying on advisors to brief her on what she needs to know about the most popular sport in Scotland, one that attracts 100,000 season ticket holders to two clubs in the city that she represents at Holyrood.
Celtic’s training trip has been the biggest news issue in the sport since the turn of the year with politicians being their usual selves in selecting the aspects that they wish to highlight.
Going to Dubai was a very bad judgement call from Celtic but it was perfectly legal, some people might not like it, find it distasteful and decide to capitalise on it but context is everything with Lennon taking his chance yesterday to hit back with a reference to the much celebrated drunken Conga from the Scotland squad.
The Sun reports Lennon saying:
I’m not going to get into a fight with the First Minister but I will take umbrage on her use of the term ‘R&R’, which she selectively picked out of interviews — completely ignoring the hard work we were intending to do and the intensive training.
And the innuendo that we abused our so-called privileges when we were there. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s not as if we were doing a conga at three o’clock in the morning in a dining room, or dancing to Baccara in a dressing room, or traipsing up and down the country with the virus in a train.
My players’ behaviour was exemplary. The way this has been portrayed has been a total distortion of the facts. Yet we come back to this barrage of absolute hypocrisy.
The train reference is in relation to SNP MP Margaret Ferrier who made a trip to London after testing then returned to Glasgow after a positive result rather than self-isolate in London.
