APPARENTLY one of the lesser known benefits that has come from the coronavirus pandemic is that the M77 has been extended south to take in the new Glasgow suburb of Malaga.

How else can you explain Celtic player Boli Bolingoli’s 24-hour trip to Spain after all the players were explicitly told not to leave Glasgow during the player’s short break last week.

Surely nobody can be so stupid as to take a three and a half hour flight to Malaga to spend one night on the Costa del Sol during a pandemic which requires a 14-day quarantine on returning.

So there must be another simple explanation for Bolingoli’s actions.

Maybe, like Alice, he simply fell down a rabbit hole and when he emerged on a beach he mistook the Med for the boating lake in Strathclyde Park and the sumptuous villas of Marbella for Motherwell.

It’s an easy mistake to make after all.

Perhaps Bolingoli simply decided to do what generations of Glaswegians have done and went ‘doon the watter’ for a short break and went further south than he intended.

Rounding Portugal in his boat may have been a giveaway, but then the Rock of Gibraltar could be mistaken for Dumbarton, while the distant Atlas mountains in Morocco could resemble Arran in a heat haze.

On his return, too embarrassed to own up, he kept his adventure all to himself and failed to inform Celtic where he’d been.

Only he was rumbled when the Mad Hatter and a Barbary ape from Gibraltar turned up to training to check he was OK and manager Neil Lennon hit the roof.

Now while all of these scenarios are completely preposterous, they all have more credibility than the truth and is why Bolingoli is unlikely to play for Celtic again.

Scottish football has been put firmly on the naughty step by the actions of Bolingoli and the ‘Aberdeen 8’.

The clubs have had to postpone all their matches this week and both are extremely fortunate to escape without losing any points as they clearly should have done, and I write that as an Aberdeen fan.

Ironically, one of the fixtures postponed is Saturday’s match between the two teams. Future games between Aberdeen and Celtic should be known as ‘El Covido’ in homage to the past week’s events.

Let’s hope no other player decides to fall down a rabbit hole in the coming weeks.