Given a full working day to justify denying Celtic a goal against St Johnstone the SFA decided to stay silent and hope that the issue blows over.
They received full support on that from Celtic with CEO Michael Nicholson now into his ninth month of silence on absolutely everything.
Sky Sports and BBC Scotland have the incident token coverage on Wednesday night then swiftly moved on.
No attempt was made to analyse the incident, to forensically take it apart frame by frame as they often do with such incidents.
Des Roach and Steve Conroy weren’t contacted, it seems that their expert opinions are only required for selected incidents.
The limitations of the Poundland VAR in use in Scottish football is well known but they do claim to use Hawkeye technology.
In cricket and tennis Hawkeye is trusted completely. It leaves nothing open to doubt.
It is ideal for following the route of a ball.
SFA DON’T WANT TO SHARE THE EVIDENCE
But apparently not the arc of Sebastian Tounekti’s cross to the back post which was met by Kasper Hogh.
As the line added below the ball was never out the park.
When Hogh headed it the ball was on the line. Throughout the clip it was in play. It is physically impossible for it to have gone out of play then reappear back on the line.
Only assistant referee Chris Gentles noticed that. Gentles is a member of the Glasgow Refereeing Association. It is highly unlikely that he is a Celtic or Partick Thistle fan.
The SFA doesn’t require match officials to declare the team that they support.
Conclusive proof that the ball did not cross the byline.
You can see the ball was still moving left to right when it came back into frame, then right to left as it reached Hogh’s head at the last second.
St Johnston v Celtic 09-09-2026#STJCEL #SPFL #Football pic.twitter.com/zdMAdVAAak— ?Celt For Life? (@CeltForLife_) September 10, 2026
Use the Hawkeye technology to merge the two clips and it will confirm that at no stage was the cross from Tounekti out of play.
? “Because the ball went out of the camera frame, VAR had to stick with the on-field decision”
Celtic had the ball in the net but it was ruled out for the ball going out of play ?? pic.twitter.com/mLDKmwwABh
— Sky Sports Scotland (@ScotlandSky) September 9, 2026
The Scottish FA has today received a report from Hawkeye on the incident that occurred at Livingston’s match against Aberdeen, which confirmed that the broadcast 18-yard left camera suffered a loss of calibration and ceased line tracking on the relevant video frame.
“During the review, Hawkeye were able to reprocess the data through their system and draw the calibrated offside lines from the disallowed goal, which showed Angus MacDonald to be in an offside position.
“The VAR made the decision using the technology that was available and this decision was validated by Hawkeye’s retrospective recalibration conducted as part of their review.”
There was no mention of Hawkeye yesterday as the disallowed goal trended all day across social media.
NO MEDIA MELTDOWN AS CELTIC SUFFER AGAIN
Sky Sports, TalkSPORT and BBC Scotland seemed much more relaxed about the decision than they were with Sam Nicholson’s handball against Celtic in May.
That decision prompted widespread attention although the evidence was clear and captured by all cameras.
When Tony Ralston sent his throw-in into the penalty box Nicholson elbowed Auston Trusty in the face then put his hand in front of his head to clear the ball.
The first foul was for the attack on Trusty. Typically the message put out was that the penalty was awarded for handball.
Tonight Gordon Duncan will walk his bestie Willie Collum through the first edition of the VAR Review. The monthly whitewash from the SFA.
No comparison will be made with the decision to disallow a ‘goal’ from Shim Mheuka against St Mirren on Saturday.
On that occasion with no evidence the VAR stepped in to get the referee to disallow a goal.
Four days later Celtic fans are being told that without evidence you have to go with the on-field decision.
VAR in Scotland seems not to be working properly .
The officials appear to be totally incompetent, but it’s been that way for the last 60 years.
The most important part of your article for me Joe is where is the CEO? Surely he is responsible for speaking up for the club and our best interests?! ?
Editor: In five years as CEO Nicholson has given two interviews, both to Celtic TV in December 2025 to discuss the brilliance of Wilfried Nancy.
There are reasons why the man that appointed Mark Lawwell and Paul Tisdale is kept on mute.