Man of the Week: Walter Smith

I want to highlight and praise the actions these past couple of days of the Scottish Football Association, Glasgow Rangers Football Club and their manager Walter Smith. To fully appreciate the actions we'll need to briefly recap the back story that centers around Rangers players Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor.

The two players were dropped from the Scottish national team to face Iceland on Wednesday evening after a drinking binge which began at the team hotel upon return from the World Cup qualifier against Holland - at about 4 o'clock in the morning - and lasted until lunchtime the same day.

Rangers manager Smith contacted the two players on Monday to stress they should accept - with good grace and humility - whatever punishment came their way. However, the situation took a turn for the worse as the players were seen and filmed making highly offensive - not to mention incredibly childish - gestures before kick-off on Wednesday night as they sat among the Scotland substitutes for the Iceland game.

The Scottish FA have announced that neither player will ever represent the country again, while Glasgow Rangers have suspended both players without pay for 2 weeks and Ferguson - not for the first time - has been stripped of the club captaincy. Both players are expected to be sold during the summer transfer window.

Full marks to the SFA, Glasgow Rangers and Walter Smith for their actions, actions that will no doubt hurt their short term ambitions on the field of play but it's nice to see that - at a time when it seems that just about any and all misbehaviour from footballers is defended publicly by their clubs - there are still some people in the sport that have standards.