Top-flight spot on the line
Disputed goal a bitter blow to Highlanders’ survival hopes. By Scott Mullen
IT wasn’t as much a thin blue line but a blurred white one which dished out a throbbing sense of justice and injustice in equal measure at Fir Park yesterday. Where to start? Well, probably around the 65th minute for the pivotal point in this allconsuming relegation blockbuster.
Motherwell, second bottom of the Ladbrokes Premiership, were two goals up and cruising in the first 10 minutes through Chris Cadden after goals from Louis Moult against basement side Inverness. Within nine minutes of the restart, an Alex Fisher double had brought the visitors level.
Then Inverness’s world fell apart. The momentum which had swung in their favour turned again and the sway of this match, and potentially the survival chances of Richie Foran’s team, hurled away from them.
A Scott McDonald header at the back post from an Elliott Frear cross thudded off the post and ominously towards goal. Inverness goalkeeper Owain Fon Williams, a foot planted either side of the line, reacted sharply to claw the ball away from the gaping goal and into a ruck of players.
Before any of them had the chance to react, far-side assistant referee David McGeachie raised his flag to signal the ball had crossed the line, sparking stunned celebrations around the ground, while those in red and blue on the park protested angrily to referee Willie Collum.
Five minutes later, Allan Campbell made it 4-2 with a brave bullet header for his first Motherwell goal to save his team – at least for now – and leave Foran’s side stranded five points adrift of Dundee at the bottom of the table.
“It kills us,” said the Inverness manager. “The linesman made a decision. You’ve got to be 100 per cent correct and he was obviously wrong. He has played a big part in the outcome of this game.
“This won’t affect the linesman. He isn’t going to phone me during the week and apologise. He’ll just get on with it. He’s made a mistake and doesn’t understand the consequences for us. He maybe doesn’t care, I don’t know. I don’t know him personally. Maybe he wants to make a name for himself. disappointing.”
That injustice was perhaps rightly felt by the Dubliner formerly of this parish, but it was a slice of luck delivered by the nod of a flag which has been long overdue for the team in claret and amber, and particularly McDonald.
Who could forget the “non-goal” at Dens Park as his looping effort clearly went over the line only to be not given in November, while in the Lanarkshire derby this month Ben Heneghan’s effort was ruled out when it appeared to be in during the 0-0 stalemate with Hamilton Academical.
“The referee has such a difficult decision to make,” said Motherwell manager Stephen Robinson, whose side now climbed up to 10th place, on the same points as Ross County and Hamilton. “But maybe that’s the little bit of luck we deserved. We’d have won 3-2 without it anyway.”
Robinson’s claim may well have been tongue-in-cheek, but this was a game in which his team really should have had out of sight before Inverness finally got started.
Eleven Inverness bodies were on the park but their minds were somewhere else as Motherwell rampaged over the top of some shambolic defending. Right winger Cadden was foolishly shown inside after just three minutes before being offered a sight of goal on the edge of the area.
The 20-year-old did not need to be asked twice and bent a leftfooter across Fon Williams and into the corner of the net.
The next horror show was giftwrapped by the unusually ropey Fon Williams. Moult’s floated cross should have been gathered easily, but the jump of Ryan Bowman spooked the Welshman into missing the ball as it trundled in.
Bowman should have made it three when Fon Williams spilled a Moult 30-yarder at his feet but the striker’s shot thudded back at the keeper. But then came Inverness, or should I say Fisher. The former Monza striker should have raced
his way to a hat-trick as he got his first of the game on 21 minutes, deflecting a Liam Polworth shot in from the edge of the box.
Having spurned more chances than the Monopoly Top Hat, it looked like his luck would be out.
As it transpired, it would be, but not before a kamikaze Motherwell defence heightened the angst by allowing Fisher to eventually take his tally to two after 54 minutes. His cross-field run on to a long ball wasn’t tracked and, as Craig Samson advanced way out his goal before freezing, the cool lofted finish into the gaping net from 25 yards hinted at a grandstand finish for Foran’s team.
We would get one, but not quite how he, or most inside the ground, would have quite expected.