Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Referee gives his views on the big calls at Fir Park
WILLIE Collum was the referee as Aberdeen travelled to Fir Park to face Motherwell in a crucial relegation battle.
How did Collum and his officiating team, including Steven McLean on VAR, get on?
In a 1-0 victory for the visitors, there were two controversial moments in the match. Unsurprisingly they involved handball decisions, writes Finlay Elder.
Motherwell manager Stuart Kettlewell felt his team were harshly treated with the hosts on the wrong end of these calls.
The Dons were 1-0 up courtesy of a Leighton Clarkson goal when Well thought they had equalised through an Angus MacDonald own goal.
The goal looked clean and nobody was claiming for anything. Nobody knew what the VAR check was for – it certainly was not clear and obvious.
Referee Collum would be sent to the monitor, where VAR had spotted a very unfortunate handball by Theo Bair in the build-up to the goal.
Replays show the ball does appear to strike the arm of the Canadian but he knows nothing about it and there’s not really anything he can do about it.
It is an incredibly harsh decision and similar to the penalty Aberdeen conceded the week before against Dundee, when Jack MacKenzie was adjudged to have handled.
Yes, the arm may appear to be in an unnatural position, but what is he supposed to do?
I think the hosts were very hard done by for a slight handball to rule out the goal.
The incident did not lead directly to a goal. The shot by Lennon Miller goes in due to the deflections, not the handball.
The goal should have stood – it was not a clear and obvious error.
Unfortunately, VAR is
still looking to pick things out as opposed to knowing what they are looking for.
If that goal happened before VAR was introduced nobody would have been questioning it.
Motherwell might have had a shout for a penalty too.
With Aberdeen holding on desperately to their one-goal lead in a tight encounter, in the last few moments of the game the ball appeared to hit the arm of Graeme Shinnie.
Play was stopped before the referee blew for full-time.
A VAR check would not ask for a review and the game ended.
I think a penalty would have been very harsh as the player’s arm is not outstretched.
I don’t believe it was a handball.
The game was well over the allocated additional time. I know it is a minimum of three minutes, but a good two and a half minutes were played over that minimum.
There was an injury for the Dons, which only took up about a minute of this time, but I think the referee should have stopped the game earlier.
However, I am surprised the penalty was not given. It’s not a handball but we have seen plenty of these incidents ending in penalties this season.
This now becomes the bigger issue because of how often handballs are given and everyone expects a handball in the box to result in a penalty.
Once again the consistency is not there. I don’t think it is handball in either of the two big incidents in this match, so the referee got one right and one wrong on Saturday.
Finlay Elder was a registered referee for six years and a category 5 official from 2019, with experience in the Highland League, Juniors and Club Academy.