No contact- Clueless Collum justifies James Forrest penalty reversal

Willie Collum has been performing gymnastics to justify the decision not to award Celtic a penalty at Hampden for the double attack on James Forrest.

Referee Calum Scott initially awarded a penalty, after a VAR check by Andrew Dallas the incident was reviewed pitchside with the match referee reversing his decision.

In February 2019 Dallas Junior awarded four penalties against St Mirren on a visit to Ibrox.

Collum and Dallas both owe their careers to the known bigot Hugh Dallas, they are all members of the Lanarkshire Referee Association.

Celtic were leading 4-0 at Hampden when the ball broke to Forrest at the edge of the penalty box.

As he moved towards goal he took evasive action to avoid one brutal challenge, slightly off balance his run towards goal was then ended by a second defender who charged in raising his arm towards the attackers face, Forrest attempted to cushion that but could no longer keep his balance.

No penalty according to Collum, Dallas and rising star Scott.

Despite an increase of 25% extra matches, no Scottish referees were involved in a single Champions League match this season.

In all of the released audio it is clear how emotional the VAR officials are in their use of language.

On the VAR Review Collum reverted back to his usual accent, during a recent video interview with The Sun he was wan ae the boayz as he discussed fitbaw, didnae, widnae, cannae and heided just like a regular guy.

The challenge the referee punished — there’s no contact, or minimal contact, I actually don’t think there’s any.

The Celtic player goes down, and there has been talk about an arm coming across, but that’s not enough in terms of a threshold for us to award a penalty kick here.

If there was a feeling that the second challenge with the arm met the threshold for a penalty kick, you would need to bring the referee to the monitor and say, ‘Is this enough for you?’ Otherwise, it’s VAR re-refereeing the match.

But I want to reiterate again, and be quite clear, the upper body contact there is not enough for us for a penalty kick.

In Collum’s first season as Head of Refereeing the standards have crashed even further but that has been compensated by his regular media appearances to promote himself and come over as a right good lad.

Out in the real world clubs and supporters are suffering as refs like Scott, Matthew MacDermid, Ross Hardie and Grant Irvine climb the ladder simply for being Collum clones.

David Dickinson is expected to be put in charge of next Sunday’s Glasgow Derby at Ibrox, making a dream come true for the Renfrewshire based referee and his loyal family.