Beaton kept calm and let Old Firm hotheads get stuck into war of words

John Beaton has over-reacted in big games before and gone in too quick with his cards. But he changed his approach for yesterday’s Old Firm derby at Ibrox and I hope he sticks to it. This was much better from him. He let the game flow and didn’t involve himself him unless it was wa necessary. That’s Th the way I tried tri to referee myself m and it’s the way w I like to see it donedo nowadays. John will have learnt l from it and he’ll come out of the game with real credit, rightly so.

Hopefully he’ll look at it and realise that’s the way he should be dealing with those kind of fixtures.

Anyone with any sense would look at it – realise nobody’s saying anything negative about it – and keep doing it in the way which brought you success.

By changing your approach, you find it can turn out very differently and that’s what happened in a positive sense for John yesterday.

The danger in Rangers/Celtic games with the intense atmosphere is that you flash your cards early in a bid to stamp your authority on it. But he didn’t do that yesterday.

He did really well in the game. He took a couple of chances in the first few minutes with Alfredo Morelos and James Tavernier – but it worked out for him.

He could have done both of them

but he chose not to. If he’d yellow carded them both, he’d have had nowhere else to go for the rest of the game with those two players. And from that point onwards there was nothing really contentious to deal with. There were a few incidents inci with Scott Sco Brown as asw well but he managed ma the situations. sit He just let them th get on o with it which w is the best b way to referee these games. Morelos os had a wee kick up the he backside on Brown which he got away with.

And a minute later, , Tavernier had a hold of f Callum McGregor and pulled him to the ground.

He could have done the Gers captain but instead had a quiet word in his ear and got on with the game.

That’s the way I like it. He was very composed throughout the 90 minutes and it paid off.

When it threatened to boil over slightly, or when players went down toot theatrically, he justj took a step backb and assessed it beforeb making any rashra decisions. There was only one majorma cal l in the gamegam and it was his assistantassi who made it for CCallum McGregor’s of f s ide goal. But it was the right decision, the Celtic player was just offside. Aside from that, it was a comfortable afternoon for the officials. This was largely due to Rangers’ dominance in the game as nobody could have envisaged Celtic being so poor.

Rangers pressed them all over the park but they weren’t diving into tackles or making rash challenges.

There were plenty of verbals going on between opposing players. Hal liday, Brown and Scott Arfield were at it.

But as a referee, you just have to let that go. As long as it’s at a safe distance, who cares?

John let them get on with h it, shouting and screaming g at each other, and that’s the e way it should be handled. .