Kyriakos, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the dive

Every now and again a moment comes along that, for some bizarre reason, connects with some wee mad corner of your brain in a way that the thousands of other bits and bobs that make up your average 90 minutes of humdrum Scottish footballing nonsense fail to do. Such a moment happened on Sunday at approximately 13:05pm.

Let's set the scene. Celtic are on the attack. The ball falls to John Hartson, who, with the lightning speed of a pregnant sloth, lets the ball bobble about at his toes before knocking it on. Invitation made, a Rangers defender needs no further encouragement and launches into the kind of scything challenge that, had it happened to himself, would have left the defender maniacally burrowing his way into the Ibrox pitch in a frenzy of arm waving and body rolling, the like of which hasn't been seen since, well, he was last tackled.

Fortunately, for the Rangers defender, arm waving and body rolling are too strenuous for our John. He enjoys the more leisurely pursuits of knocking balls into the back of the net and washing the taste of victory down with a pint of liquid pie. Instead, our Ginger headed one merely picks himself up, dusts himself down, and launches a few verbal volleys in the general direction of the lank haired defender who had recently attempted to leave him with one leg shorter than the other.

Now the defender has two options. Faced with the red headed fury of a man with more hair on his knuckles than on his knapper, does he confront the challenge head on and fire back his own salvo of one syllable words wee Bazza has taught him on the training ground? Or does he walk away and give a good old fashioned body swerve to the opportunity of squaring up to an enraged human battering ram? Choice made, he walks away. But now his adversary follows. With two languages worth of insulting phrases at his disposal, Hartson takes another step towards the Defender and continues his verbal assault.

And then the moment.

A watching nation gasps as the Defender seems to stumble and fall. In a "Paulo Di Canio just pushed me over" kind of way, the ground rushes to meet him. Half way down, his initial stumble turns into a collapse normally found in rejected copies of Roy of the Rovers. His limbs take on a life of their own. Legs are pulled from under him by some invisible force. His Chest is puffed out, head back, and his arms shoot out in some twisted re-enactment of William Defoe's death scene in Platoon.

Then it is over. Time returns to normal. The game continues. Sean Maloney bullets a ball over the bar, and we watch fearful as the referee pulls over Attacker and Defender. For a few horrifying moments, we think the worst - A red card for Hartson. On the TV Jock Browns voice is almost willing it to be. But then we realise, praise the lord, that no cards will be produced. A stiff telling off is administered and Defender and Attacker go on their merry way. We settle down, thankful we still have Eleven men on the park.

And then we see the replay. We see the replay again. And again. And each time we see it, we realise that the red card we feared for Hartson should have instead been flashed in the face of the Rangers player. Now it's Jock Browns turn to feel relieved. We feel angry. Furious! We've been cheated! We should be 1-0 up and playing against Ten Men! We...

...Somewhere deep in that wee mad corner of your brain the connection is made. Somewhere deep in that wee mad corner of your brain a light goes on, and we laugh. That one moments, we suddenly realise, sums up the opposition perfectly. Six months of footballing hell can be seen in one badly executed dying swan routine.

The initial Bravado. The lack of ability. The bottle crashing. The excuses. The pathetic attempts to divert attention from one's own failure onto someone else. And more importantly, the lack of any sort of commitment or talent in what they're doing. Hell, they can't even cheat convincingly these days.

And that, my friends, sums up Rangers in a nutshell.