Bobby Madden has had his Dougie Dougie moment by blaming his assistant for sending off Funso Ojo at Tannadice last Saturday.
The Aberdeen midfielder was confronted and attacked by a Dundee United fan moments before half-time.
Rather than show sympathy and compassion for Ojo Madden reached for a second yellow card with the incident shown across the globe.
Rather than admit that he had made a mistake the East Kilbride based referee has told the SFA that he was acting on information from an assistant. Drew Kirkland and Andy Milne were the assistants at Tannadice.
Reacting to the failure to even appeal the decision, at lunchtime today Aberdeen stated:
Steven Gunn, Director of Football at AFC said: “As we understand it, the Referee and the SFA’s Head of Refereeing Operations, immediately after seeing replays of the footage, recognised that the Referee had been mistakenly advised by his assistant referee that it was Funso that had pushed a spectator rather than the other way around. As a result, Funso was given a second caution. Pushing a spectator is, in fact, a sending-off offence which would have given us a right of appeal.
“We don’t doubt that, had the Referee been aware of the correct facts, he would have taken every step to protect Funso given the circumstances. The Club fully recognises that mistakes happen.
“We are dismayed that the Scottish FA, despite their sympathy with the Club and the player, have not taken a common sense approach, that in this case would have been unlikely to be disputed by anyone in football. They have instead chosen to stick rigidly to the rules which prevent any meaningful discussion to remedy this when we believe it would have been within their discretionary powers to do so.”
In 2010, also at Tannadice Dougie McDonald decided to over-rule himself after awarding Celtic a penalty at Tannadice. Assistant Steven Craven was set up as the fall guy for the incident in a scenario put together by Hugh Dallas.
After being squeezed out of top flight appointments Craven revealed what had happened after the match as the SFA tried to protect McDonald who was a Grade 1 FIFA referee at the time.
Next Thursday Madden will referee the Celtic v Hearts match featuring his close friend Andy Halliday on the Hearts bench.It’ll be the fourth time in 15 SPFL matches that Celtic will have Madden on the whistle.