The Scottish Football Association’s Crawford Allan has said that VAR got the call correct in Celtic’s win over Rangers. The SFA’s Head of Refereeing spoke out after the announcement about the independent review of refereeing decisions.
Back in December, Brendan Rodgers’ side were 2-1 winners in the fixture but at 1-0 in the first half, the ball floated into the box towards Sima and the ball seemed to hit Alistair Johnston’s arm.
Speaking at Hampden on Thursday, Allan said that whilst Collum should have referred the matter to Nick Walsh.
“APP should have been reviewed and the hand moving across the ball was sufficient to have that looked at for the rest of the APP.
“I’ve said that privately to the club as well. It’s hard to say William made a mistake because he didn’t make a factual process error.
“It was a subjective decision that he made and he is entitled to that.
“Would I have preferred if the handball had been examined through to an APP? Yes.
“But I am not going to say that William has done anything wrong in terms of process.”
Celtic won the game and were comfortable. However, conversation in weeks following that surrounded the decision and seeming injustice of it all. Notwithstanding the fact that Sima was offside and it would not have counted anyways.
The SFA have made it clear that the teams will never be able to dictate who referees their games after the furore from Ibrox about Collum.
Of course, if Collum IS in fact one of the officials for the next game, there is no doubt that it will be with the sole intention to ensure tgat he clearly favours the new club, as most referees already do.