Snowball ‘doughballs’ don’t impress Livi boss

Livingston manager David Martindale has criticised the Rangers supporters who delayed the start of the second half of their team’s win at the Tony Macaroni Arena by throwing snowballs into the home side’s penalty area.

With the Scottish champions leading 2-1, referee David Munro had to wait around 10 minutes for the barrage aimed towards Livingston goalkeeper Max Stryjek’s goal to stop and the snow to be cleared.

Martindale went onto the pitch to plead with the Rangers fans to cease the interruption and was not amused by an incident he felt reflected poorly on the Premiership with the fixture being televised live by Sky Sports.

Rangers went on to win 3-1 in new manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s first league game in charge.

Martindale, pictured inset, said: “We shouldn’t be standing here talking about the doughballs with the snowballs.

“I just don’t understand it. You could maybe see it if your team is getting beat and there is a bit of frustration there.

“But when your team is winning 2-1, to hold up the second half – I don’t understand that at all. I just think it’s a little bit of a blight on Scottish football – it’s on telly!

“It’s on national telly and people are watching that so, come on, screw the nut a wee bit. I know the majority of Rangers fans were not throwing snowballs but it doesn’t look good for anyone.

“It doesn’t look good for Rangers, it doesn’t look good for Livingston and it doesn’t look good for Scottish football. That’s my take on it anyway.

“Rangers should be going away from here talking about the 3-1 win in Gio’s first league game, their first three points under the new manager.

“But instead we are talking about the Rangers fans throwing snowballs at the Livingston players at the start of the second half. It’s just stupid and I don’t understand it.

“You want to be talking about the football, so fair play to Rangers. Overall they deserved the three points but for the majority of it they knew they were in a game.

"At 2-0 they probably thought they were going to cruise the game but we got back into it.”