Garner tried to hurt Imrie
MARTIN CANNING last night accused Rangers striker Joe Garner of deliberately trying to hurt Dougie Imrie with a wild lunge that has incensed the Hamilton boss.
Canning has rubbished Rangers’ defence of their player who was only booked by referee John Beaton for the kung-fu kick on Imrie in Saturday’s 6-0 Scottish Cup rout of Accies at Ibrox.
He claims Garner’s intention was to injure his Accies opponent and should have seen a straight red.
Garner later clashed heads with Blair Adams and that has ruled the 25-year-old Hamilton stopper out of action for three weeks with concussion.
Canning has no problem with that challenge deeming it hard but fair but was scathing about Garner’s earlier transgression.
He said: “I’ve no issue with someone putting themselves about. The issue is he shouldn’t have been on the park to do it.
“In terms of a clash of heads with Blair and an aggressive centre-forward I’ve no issue with that. But to go and do what he did with Dougie that’s not aggression. That’s an, ‘I’m going to hurt you’ type of aggression.
“The noises coming out of Rangers seem to be he didn’t make much contact but if you watch it back you can see the intent was there.
“It was a really bad attempt at a tackle. I’ve no issue with the way he plays if he tries to intimidate people but there’s that side of it when he oversteps the mark and that tackle definitely did.
“That wasn’t an honest tackle. It was an attempt to hurt somebody. It’s a fine line with guys like that. It’s for him and Rangers to deal with. But Blair has a bad gash and will now miss the Hearts game this weekend.
“That’s frustrating because that came 10 minutes after Garner should have been sent off. We’ve now lost a player for two to three weeks with concussion.”
Canning was so angry with Beaton’s performance he took it up with John Fleming, the SFA’s head of refereeing.
He said: “I spoke to John at length but what was said better stay between us. I think they know mistakes were made but that comes as no consolation to us because what’s done is done.
“I also spoke to John Beaton after the game and that will stay private too. I’m always conscious these guys have a difficult job to do and they get one shot at it in real time.
“But they’re the best at their job so you expect them to get the big calls right. Three big calls went against us and they were probably the wrong decisions.”
Last Saturday was a bad day at the office for Hamilton. As well as being dumped out of the Scottish Cup at Ibrox Motherwell’s win at Kilmarnock dropped them back into the play-off position.
But Canning claims they will have no problem getting over their dismal display. He said: “It should be an easy one to write off because it’s probably the strangest game I have been involved in due to the decisions that didn’t go in our favour. “We were in the game only to lose four goals in the last 10 minutes. You can make a big song and dance about decisions – and they did impact on the game massively – but we can’t defend the way we did for the last four goals from set-pieces. “It’s something we’ve not really been guilty of this season. “We conceded 21 corners against Aberdeen in our previous game but stood up to it and beat them 1-0.”
EWING GRAHAME