In the aftermath of the weekend’s League Cup semi-final at Hampden between Aberdeen and the club from Ibrox, I wrote a piece about the karate kick James Penrice made on an Aberdeen player and said that I did not expect there to be widespread outrage over it, although it was clearly an outrageous tackle.

The description of it as a karate kick, which I used in the article and which I saw elsewhere on social media, was later echoed on the referee’s podcast and is now pretty much the standard way it’s being described.

And yet Aberdeen’s initial response, in terms of what their manager had to say after the game, was virtually zero.

The media then imposed what might otherwise be described as a two-day news blackout on the matter, barely discussing it at all.

And now it turns out that Aberdeen raised the issue with the SFA after the game and are apparently satisfied that a line has been drawn under it, which tells us about as much as the Celtic board usually does, which is to say nothing at all of any constructive value.

What are we to assume from that update? What are we to assume from Aberdeen and the SFA having a cosy little chat about the incident and both parties apparently having moved on? What conclusion are we supposed to draw?

Are these kinds of kung-fu moves acceptable now in Scottish football?

Is this where we are? Or was the general verdict that it should have resulted in a red card?

Because if it should have resulted in a red card, then surely somebody should be explaining why it did not.

There is, in fact, a retrospective disciplinary process for serious foul play and violent conduct.

Under the Scottish FA’s current rules, a Fast Track Notice of Complaint can be raised where a player has committed a sending-off offence but was not dismissed, provided the relevant criteria are met.

But there is an important catch.

The SFA’s own guidance has made clear that retrospective action is generally intended for incidents, or significant parts of incidents, which were unseen by the match officials.

If the referee saw what happened and made a judgement on it, that decision is ordinarily regarded as final. And that raises what might be the most important question of all.

Did the officials see James Penrice’s challenge clearly and decide that it was not worthy of a red card? Because if that is what happened, I would very much like to hear what convinced them that it was not worthy of that sanction.

If the incident was missed entirely, then there appears to be a mechanism through which it could have been examined afterwards. If it was seen, and simply judged not to be serious foul play, then somebody needs to explain how that conclusion was reached.

Because I cannot believe that an incident that serious, with an offence that blatant, is simply going to be hand-waved away as “one of those things.”

We do not even know whether Aberdeen’s questions received proper answers, and we certainly do not know what those answers were. They are supposedly satisfied. Since when is that an explanation? Satisfied by what? The answers, or the fact that there’s nowhere left for their protests and questions to go?

Cause they are different things.

In the meantime, what conclusions are the rest of us meant to draw? That perhaps this kind of behaviour is fine now? Surely that cannot be the position.

Because otherwise we are going to see tackles like this again and again. Eventually somebody is going to get badly hurt, somebody is going to be carried off on a stretcher and the player responsible will be standing there smirking at the camera.

So, I think we need to know the logic behind arriving at that decision, and if there was an acknowledgement to Aberdeen that it should have resulted in a red, what happened to the officials who arrived at that decision? Life goes on regardless?

Because this was a challenge so extraordinary that people online were not analysing it as a football tackle at all. They were analysing it as an MMA move.

That may be one of the most blatant incidents of serious foul play we have seen in Scottish football in a long, long time, and I would find it incredible if that incident was not weighing on the minds of people all over the game.

I would be astonished if there were not people inside Hampden who are honestly gobsmacked that it did not result in an appropriate punishment. It is just incredible to me that it could be passed over by the referee and then by the VAR officials when everyone knows exactly what they watched.

I cannot overemphasise this enough. If such a brutal manoeuvre is legitimised by SFA silence, then we might as well adopt the rules of Rollerball right now and have done with it, because surely that is where this is headed.

This was not an incident which could simply be ignored. Not only was it brutal, vicious, violent and completely over the top, but it materially influenced the game.

How could it not have materially influenced the game?

The match itself was a dull, boring, horrible 0-0 draw right up until the closing stages. Nobody will convince me that this incident did not materially affect the outcome when the Ibrox club would have had to play with ten men for the majority of the match.

That is simply not tenable when the game was so close.

Aberdeen should not have gone quietly to the SFA.

They should have made their discontent and their shock at that decision public at the time, in the media, directly in the aftermath of the match, and that they decided to soft-soap it gave the media the excuse to pretend it did not happen at all.

But what happens when the next player does that and gets the red card? Is nobody going to ask what the difference was? Is nobody going to ask what explanation the SFA gave for why John Beaton and the VAR team allowed that to happen?

People wonder why there are so many conspiracy theorists in Scottish football. People wonder why so many supporters think they are watching some version of a rigged game.

If an incident like that is not a sending-off offence, then apparently, we have all misunderstood the rulebook. We have all misunderstood football all these years.

Colby Donovan was booked for his challenge on Zac Sapsford in the Dundee Utd game, and that incident generated days of discussion amongst the hacks about whether he should have been sent off.

And yet here we are with something arguably far worse, and suddenly everyone appears to have decided that there is nothing much to discuss. This is the same media which is still fulminating over the penalty decision Celtic got at Motherwell in the penultimate league fixture of last season months after the event.

It is astonishing what incidents they choose to highlight and which incidents they do not, which incidents they decide are worthy of days, even weeks, of discussion, analysis and demands for answers from the governing bodies, and which ones they are prepared to quietly move past.

I knew there would be no major inquest into this one. And yet it is very clearly a serious incident with serious implications, not least for the next player who does it, far less the victim who might be left writhing on the turf afterwards.

We should simply be grateful that the Aberdeen player did not end up seriously injured as a result of that challenge, because that could so easily have happened. And that is why this cannot simply be waved away.

If that tackle was acceptable, then say so. Let’s have the new rulebook where anything goes, as long as you wear the right colour of shirt. Let’s have it out there.

If it was not acceptable, explain why no action was taken. Explain why the referee did not send him off. Explain why VAR did not intervene. Explain what Aberdeen were told when they raised it afterwards.

Because “the matter has been dealt with” is not an explanation. “There is a line under it” is not an explanation. Those are phrases designed to end questions, not answer them.

And that is exactly the problem, because there is no justifying what happened, but it seems that nobody wants to properly explain it either.

This is Scottish football. This is one of the reasons we are such a mess.

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