Who’s got spare shinnies? This fabled cry can be heard from within every single dressing room precisely 30 minutes before kick-off at each and every grassroots game played in the entire country for the duration of every weekend throughout the football season.
Most people, when leaving their home, do the “phone, keys, wallet” pat-and-check of their person before closing the door behind them. That’s because leaving the house without any of these items is a bad idea. Not because keys, for instance, are a bad idea – it’s a good idea to secure your home – but because you won’t be able to get back inside without them.
It’s the same thing with shin guards. When leaving the house to play a game of amateur football at any level, this pat-and-check is extended to “phone, keys, wallet, boots, strip [especially socks], shinnies”. While Deep Heat, paracetamol, energy drinks, Haribo, Under Armour, and a Bluetooth speaker are all optional extras for the pre-match experience, the aforementioned list is standard issue. Again, not because boots, strips and shinnies are bad ideas, but because you won’t be allowed to play without them.
That’s why the “Who’s got spare shinnies?” cry is generally greeted with a collective groan by managers and team-mates alike. Playing football at grassroots level is no walk in the park. There’s the dreaded midweek training session. The sorry soul who organises everything from booking fields and referees to filling out paperwork and paying fees. You might think “What’s one game without a pair of shinnies?”, but the rules are clear: no shinnies, no play. So given all the thankless effort that goes into making sure the match goes ahead, no manager at any level is going to take a chance and send someone out without the necessary equipment and risk the repercussions – in terms of injury or for breaking the rules. They’d only have themselves to blame if their league applied sanctions for their unnecessary actions.
So speaking of shinnies, it was a case in point of the virtues of football players padding their lower legs with a thin strip of plastic when Aberdeen’s Graeme Shinnie hurtled into a challenge with Ross County’s Jack Baldwin in Dingwall last Friday night. The “he’s won the ball” reaction from Andy Walker on Sky Sports co-commentary was the predictable and lamentable old-school take. Football might be a contact sport and shinpads are worn as a precaution for this very reason. But while no one is saying Shinnie set out to hurt his opponent, the area he caught Baldwin on the follow-through – you guessed it, the shin – and the force that was applied was completely reckless. It was a horror challenge, and it provided an effective example of VAR as referee Euan Anderson made the right call to produce a red card after reviewing the incident on the pitch-side monitor.
The club’s decision to appeal the red card was well within their rights, and was made full in the knowledge that they were risking having the three-match ban increased on its account. The severity of the original ban was, of course, based on Shinnie having been ordered off for a second bookable offence in his previous Premiership encounter against St Johnstone at the start of the month. When the appeal panel opted to uphold Anderson’s call on the night, however, the punitive additional match suspension that will see the midfielder miss the club’s next four matches was a severe blow to Barry Robson’s side.
The on-loan Wigan midfielder has added much-needed experience and grit to the transformed Pittodrie side since Robson took over from Jim Goodwin at the end of January. The Dons take on Rangers this weekend, and will miss those combative attributes at such a crucial stage of the season as they try to consolidate the third-place platform Robson has propelled them onto with just six matches remaining.
But there has to be a sense of “you knew the rules” applied here; and that’s not just aimed at the club, but to the player as well. Just as you don’t want to be the one to turn up on a Saturday without your shinnies, doing it two games in a row ought to see you paying the tab on the team night out at the end of the season. For a 31-year-old Scotland internationalist in his second spell at Pittodrie, lunging into a challenge in the middle of the pitch against the league’s bottom-markers was a ridiculous decision to make. Doing it one game after your previous red card is practically unfathomable.
While Aberdeen released a statement decrying the outcome of the appeal and the SFA’s stance as “insulting”, “grossly unfair”, and the ban “ridiculously harsh and unnecessary”, Robson was far more measured in his response yesterday. While the fledgling manager will no doubt have hoped the appeal would be successful, he must have known it was a long shot. Deep down, his disappointment will be with the player, not the officials or the governing bodies.
“Spare shinnies?” Well, for the next four crucial Premiership matches, Barry Robson might be the one issuing that very call.
