Even after 40 years at Celtic Danny McGrain could hardly believe the performance of the referee in Wednesday’s reserve win over Rangers at Murray Park.
Celtic’s 1-0 win can be watched again on channel 67 as Morten Rasmussen scores the only goal of the match.
Without doubt the current term will be remembered as the season of the honest mistake with numerous decisions not going Celtic’s way, especially in the games against Rangers.
The mistakes of Craig Thomson, Steve Conroy and Dougie McDonald have all attracted criticism with even Hugh Dallas forced into admitting his disappointment with some of this season’s decisions although the only apology that has been issued was on behalf of Thomson after the opening derby of the season.
There are a few compilation videos around on the internet but by any standards the performance of the unknown referee in the reserve match from Wednesday will take some beating.
Speaking after the match reserve coach McGrain said: “I’ve heard of bad refereeing but we had three certain penalty kicks.
“The guy (Kirk Broadfoot) just took Paddy McCourt’s feet away from him, the referee tried to say that he put his foot in.
“Then there was the handball, the ball was going into the back of the net and he said it wasn’t intentional but if he stops the ball going into the net it’s surely a penalty kick. You’ve got to get some advantage from it.
“But hey we won 1-0, we played the only football on the park. It was a great game for everybody concerned and especially for Glenn Loovens and Thomas Rogne, they came through without any problems.”
Danny forgot to mention the third penalty incident where after some jostling for a bouncing ball Neil Alexander decided to drag Rasmussen onto the deck.
In all three incidents the Rangers players looked surprised to get away without punishment.
It’s only fair to add that when Rasmussen did score his goal he could well have been in an offside position but the three penalty incidents were far from marginal.
Chanel 67 certainly goes someway to filling the gap left by the demise of Setanta and Celtic TV, Neil Lennon’s interviews are honest and refreshing giving away a few snippets of information.