Why did Sky Sports hold back on Sima offside decision when BBC Scotland shared detail much earlier?

BBC Scotland was informed that no penalty was awarded against Alistair Johnston for handball during the half-time break in the Glasgow Derby.

For reasons best known to themselves Sky Sports decided to mention that inconvenient truth to their viewers about 10 minutes into the second half, then later on shared an image with the infamous SFA VAR lines showing Abdallah Sima to be offside when John Lundstram played the ball.

Play was held up for a VAR check but Nick Walsh wasn’t required to check the monitor, play restarted with Ian Crocker and Kenny Miller furious at the decision not to award a penalty.

As Andy Walker revealed earlier this year the Sky Sports commentary team have access to the conversation between the match referee and the VAR official but never quote exactly what they have heard.

Collum decided that it wasn’t a penalty, play continued with the decision that Walsh had viewed which was a bye-kick to Celtic.

Having been prompted by their commentary team there was only one issue to discuss in the Sky Sports Studio at half-time with Boydy, Faddy and Lenny trying to outdo each other with their outrage that no penalty had been awarded.

Meanwhile, on BBC Scotland, covering the match on radio and online they were aware that the decision from VAR was that Sima was offside in the build up.

CLICK HERE for BBC Scotland, live matchday blog with penalty claim timeline.

Prompted by Sky Sports there was some dark suggestions from Philippe Clement after the match, they reported:

When Clement was told by Sky Sports reporter Luke Shanley that there was an offside in the build-up to the Johnston ‘handball’ incident, the Rangers manager responded: “The decision was not made about an offside, the decision of no penalty was made about the handball. That was the decision. So that was a strange decision for me.”

It may, or may not be the case that Clement was informed by someone from Sky that the decision was based on handball, not an offside call.

A few hours after the match the Ibrox media messengers were informed of the demand to the SFA to release the audio, it seems that transparency is vital almost a year after Collum and John Beaton denied Celtic a penalty at Ibrox when Connor Goldson handled a shot from Carl Starfelt.

Not content with their post match demand to release the audio there was a further statement from Ibrox on the Sunday complaining that their request wouldn’t be granted until Wednesday.

With attention on Collum, Walsh and VAR, Clement is getting a free pass over selecting Cyriel Dessers, expecting Todd Cantwell to mark Callum McGregor and losing to a club that had been beaten by Kilmarnock and Hearts earlier this month.

The first Ibrox statement seemed very heavily based on Sky Sports coverage with the Daily Record reporting:

Rangers have asked the SFA to make the VAR audio available to the club to understand why no penalty was awarded despite a clear handball by Celtic’s Alistair Johnston.

The club is keen to understand the process that led to that decision being made, as it was not made public at the time nor communicated to our team. We also understand Sky as the league’s official broadcaster is deeply unhappy and confused with the situation.

“Their panel spent half-time in agreement that Rangers should have been awarded a penalty unaware of any offside check. Again, this only surfaced in the second half. Rangers remains advocates of VAR but there must be significantly more transparency for it to be successful in Scotland.

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