CELTIC skipper Scott Brown said today that he would have been handed an extended ban had he made the same challenge Andrew Davies put in on him last week.

The Ross County captain was sent off in the first half of the Hoops’ 3-0 Premiership win at Parkhead on Saturday.

Davies lunged at the Celtic midfielder, who had stumbled to the ground under a tackle by Billy McKay, and will serve the statutory two-match suspension.

Before tomorrow’s trip to Hamilton, Brown, 32, joked about the incident saying: “I’m not too bad. I didn’t want any more kids anyway. He has probably done me a favour.”

However, when asked if Davies’s punishment sent out the wrong message, he said: “It is not for me to say, that’s for the SFA to discuss and sort out.

“But for me, if I would have done that, it would have been a lot worse. It would have been in the papers for weeks on end and I would have been getting a five/six-game ban.

“I will let you make your own mind on that.

“You want to tackle hard, you want to win the ball.

“There is a fair way to go about it but stamping on opponents when the ball is nowhere near you is definitely not being a hard man or going into a hard tackle.

“People lose their head now and then. I understand that. It happens in football, but, for stamping when the ball is nowhere near you and especially where he stamped as well, it wasn’t exactly pleasant at the time.

“I enjoy the tackles, I enjoy people getting touch tight, people saying they are better players than me and got the better of me.

“I keep coming back and proving them all wrong. That’s part and parcel of who I am.”