Why Carlisle United's Jon Mellish isn't only one who should be banned

It is not to instigate it. It is also not to give in to retaliatory machismo when a referee is a few yards away. Mellish certainly did not need to sarcastically slap Elliot Watt’s hand the moment Carlisle were awarded a penalty, and he didn’t need to go back at him, nostrils flaring, after the Salford City man had given him a cowardly shove from behind.

(And yes, it’s easy to say all this from the comfort of a press box seat or place on a terrace. It’s also easy, if we are honest, to understand a little of the human instinct behind Mellish’s wish to respond to some argy-bargy as he did)

At the same time – do neither, and United have one of their most important players for the last game of the season and (most probably) two play-off semi-final legs. Do neither, and their chances of reaching League One are better. Do neither, and Seb Stockbridge does not have decisions to make which also occur in a split-second, with one glance at the incident before it comes down to the whistle and the cards.

Do neither, and Carlisle don’t have this situation to fathom now: a key defender down, and Paul Simpson having to go either with a less preferred shape or certain selection options which have not taken them across the course of 2022/23.

Actions have consequences, and Mellish’s discipline failed him at, perversely, the moment things were suddenly going well for the Blues in their final home game of the league season. He now has plenty of time to chew on that before – we can only hope – coming back out of isolation in time for a Wembley final.

Carlisle’s appeal, if you listened to Simpson, did not go in with a tailwind of confidence. They were within their rights to make it, but today’s outcome must have been priced into Simpson’s calculations from the second Mellish joined him in the dugout last Saturday.

We know, then, that the FA and their disciplinary mechanisms are hot on 'violent conduct'. That the other party goes largely scot-free in comparison to Mellish is, though, a dismal inconsistency and this is where United are entitled to carry some degree of grievance.

Elliot Watt collapsed holding his face - a face which hadn't been struck (Image: Barbara Abbott)

Elliot Watt was booked for his part in the set-to and that is where his sanction began and ended. As such, a player now knows beyond reasonable doubt that there is very little jeopardy involved in behaving as Watt did to get Mellish gone.

We have to call this cheating, because that is what it is, and we do not need to do so on an imagined moral high ground. To argue that Carlisle are historically innocent victims of all this, and it’s only the other lot who ever carry on in such a way, is pointless and wrong.

Indeed, it’s possible to claim that United owe their Football League status and even existence to a bit of over-acting. Against Darlington in the 1998/99 run-in, Blues striker Richard Tracey followed in on visiting keeper David Preece who, angered, turned to Tracey and stupidly barged into him, chest-first.

Tracey gave it the slightest moment, then fell to earth, hands on face. If the referee was initially in two minds about a penalty, he was in no doubt then. Tracey recovered without lasting damage to his head, Scott Dobie scored the spot-kick and it ended 3-3. Carlisle stayed up that season by a point.

So look closely enough, and they all do it. Yet hunting out wrongs doesn’t make it right that Watt did more than exaggerate Mellish’s push to his chest, and reacted totally contrary to the contact, since the Carlisle man did not strike the Salford man’s head in the slightest.

Behaving as though that is what happened – simulation, a lie acted out – is why Mellish has a three-game ban. It’s highly unlikely he’d have walked had Watt stood his ground or at least acted upon the shove in a less theatrical way.

So whatever the degree of blame on Mellish, and there is plenty, how is it right that a moment of disreputable conduct such as Watt’s can pass? The system that cannot or will not review such things because a player has already been dealt with in a game is not a system that delivers full and true justice.

Why can such a player not also be retrospectively sorted out? As some have pointed out, there are recent precedents, such as the revised two-game ban given to Tottenham’s Eveliina Summanen for deceiving officials in a WSL game against Manchester United, having rolled around in such a manner that saw Ella Toone sent off – a decision subsequently overturned.

An FA statement said: “It's alleged that the midfielder committed a clear act of simulation during the 80th minute, which led to an opponent being sent off, and therefore her behaviour amounts to improper conduct."

Other than the pronouns, is there a word in that sentence that does not completely tally with what we saw in the Carlisle penalty box on April 29?

Watt, then, should be feeling the heat of an FA charge as well. It should not be the case that one party in that confrontation is castigated heavily and one barely at all. This is justice with great big holes in it – which, when all’s said and done, isn’t particularly justice at all.