On Saturday, Cork City were playing Waterford in a 'friendly' match and Patrick McClean went in for a fairly hefty tackle on Cork's Seanie Maguire. It's probably fair to say that the ball was of secondary consideration as regards the challenge.
McClean then posted a picture of the tackle on his Instagram page, seeming fairly proud of the ferocity of the tackle.
Maguire later on tweeted his disapproval of any celebration of such a tackle, quite possibly (though not definitely) referring to McClean's post.
Another tweeter, presumably a Cork fan, also tweeted his disapproval and McClean somehow came across it (one assumes he was searching his name in the Twitter search bar in an idle moment - rarely a wise move, but we continue) and posted it on his own Instagram page.
Someone tags James, and he responds in a manner that will undoubtedly have the PR wizards at West Brom and the FAI respectively pulling their hair out (again).
What's more, McClean then re-posted the tackle on his own Instagram page.
Cork City manager John Caulfield was asked about the tackle after the match and he wasn't best pleased (speaking to corkcityfc.ie after the game):
Seanie Maguire's OK, obviously a scandalous challenge.
You could see he went out to 'do' Seanie, that was horrendous. But thankfully Seanie saw it at the last minute, he tried to skip it.
It was a blatant sending-off and a severe ban if you looked at it properly.
UPDATE: There's now a video of the 'tackle'. Fast forward to 2:34 to see it.
Oof.
