Steven McLean has finally spoken out about missing the Josh Meekings handball in last season’s Scottish Cup semi-final between Celtic and Inverness Caley Thistle.
With Celtic already leading 1-0 thanks to a Virgil van Dijk free kick Meekings threw his hand out to stop a netbound header from Leigh Griffiths.
Despite having a perfect view of the incident McLean never awarded a penalty with the incident also ‘missed’ by goalside assistant Alan Muir and linesman Frank Connor.
It seems that ruining a showpiece occasion has had no impact on McLean’s career with the SFA trusting him with Saturday’s Scottish Cup Final between Hibs and Sevco.
Speaking for the first time about the Meekings handball McLean told Sky Sports: “We learn from all experiences, obviously that was an incident that was missed, it was disappointing on the day and I take ultimate responsibility for it. But we have a referee team and we share responsibility so it’s important that we learn from those incidents.
“But we use our experiences from both positive incidents and negative incidents just to move forward and use it as a learning opportunity and hopefully I have used that in the last season to perform well. I had a really consistent performance level this season and I think I have benefitted from all my experiences in my career and that is what has enabled us to be in this position.”
The Meekings handball incident was shown worldwide with fans and pundits astonished that no penalty was given or red card issued to Meekings, Inverness went on to win the match in extra time before beating Falkirk to lift the Scottish Cup for the first time.
Celtic issued a statement the next day seeking clarification for what happened, no reply was ever published with the matter left alone until McLean admitted missing the incident.
Should McLean miss a similar incident on Saturday last season’s Meekings incident is bound to be recalled.
