When manager, Walter Smith, saw a re-run of the incident, he punished the player and saw to it that a public apology was issued. Lafferty accepted the wisdom of the club and did as he was told.
A wrong had been righted, and Walter Smith and Rangers cannot be praised too highly for treating the issue as they did, but the admission of wrong-doing was the stick Rangers-haters required to beat both the player and his club.
The incident itself is hardly unique in the game, but if a player known and loved by the fourth estate errs in this way, it seems to be glossed over or ignored, and with the excuse-making bluster that the player would never normally behave in this way, and of course clubs tend to stick up for their players while turning a blind eye to their poor behaviour.
Rangers, however, are bigger that that, and so an admission and apology were quickly announced. The result of this correct course of action is the player now being set apart from previous miscreants, and an ongoing campaign of vilification is perceived to be justified and deserved, not by supporters of other clubs, but by the nation`s press and media, and even, apparently, by a public announcer at Hampden Park.
Honesty has opened the door for this misguided treatment. Our sporting scribes tend to be quite discriminating when they want to put the boot in and Lafferty, fairly new to Scottish football, is an easy target, but those same critics would be reluctant to denigrate a footballing chum who had committed a similar act.
The Lafferty incident, while regrettable, has provoked a high-point in the nation`s favourite sport, but rather than seizing on the blame being readily accepted by club and player; a new and better way forward, a breath of fresh air no less, it has only served to allow petty-minded critics to further lambast a player who has been shown the error of his ways and publicly accepted his guilt.
Those players who deny wrong-doing in incidents of this nature, no matter the televised evidence before us, are quickly forgotten as long as they carry the lie about their behaviour forward indefinitely, but when honesty is encouraged and delivered, public ridicule is doubled and trebled.
There is little point in the sporting media moralising about behaviour in the sport if they are going to use the honesty they have long craved to further blast the original sinner.
When the sinner repents, football`s critics should be celebrating rather than condemning. A new dawn has arrived, and yet our press and media remain in the dark.
Why am I not surprised?