THE first month of the new SPFL season is behind us.
And now Sky Sports’ Scottish Football VAR Review show has taken a look back at the big refereeing decisions in August.
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One decision which came under scrutiny from host Gordon Duncan and SFA Head of Refereeing Willie Collum was Rangers’ penalty in their League Cup win over Alloa Atheltic.
Referee Dan McFarlane initially awarded a corner after the ball struck the hand of Cammy O’Donnell under pressure from Oscar Cortes, but VAR Greg Aitken sent him to the monitor and a penalty was awarded, with James Tavernier going on to score.
The goal moved Gers 3-1 in front and they went on to win 4-2 in Russell Martin’s only domestic victory so far, but Collum revealed his take on the incident.
He said: “There’s an understanding here that the on-field officials missed this, that’s completely understandable, it’s so difficult to catch.
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“We can support a penalty kick here, because the arm is outstretched from the body at the point of contact, but we also need to consider the playing action of the player, which is really important.
“The player’s body is perhaps on that shape because of the action of trying to play the ball.
“We can fully support a penalty kick being awarded here, we fully support the process of the penalty and the yellow card, however we’ve said from day one we need to listen to our stakeholders, what are people telling us.
“And the feeling is we prefer a penalty not to be awarded here, after consultation with people like the KMI [Key Match Incidents] and other stakeholders, players, coaches, and our referees.
“We like to speak to our referees after every matchround, and the feeling here is we would prefer if the bar was even higher.
“So we can accept the decision, but we want to raise the bar even higher in terms of handball.
“We think proximity is very important here, this is the Alloa player’s motion of trying to play the ball.
“Yes his arm’s outstretched from the body, but we prefer moving forward that this wouldn’t be awarded as a penalty kick.”
The show went on to cover the incident of Callum McGregor’s goal being disallowed in Celtic’s opening-day win over St Mirren and Rangers’ penalty in their 1-1 draw with Dundee, with Collum ruling that both decisions were correct.
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