All of us, I think, were pretty aghast at the weekend at some of the decisions. I had written after the game that it was as if the officials had brought a separate rule-book to the match and were determined to referee us to a different standard.
Last night, someone sent my old man a clip which summed up how different that standard actually was.
It was a minor moment in the game, a decision which none of the papers would have bothered to focus on, something which might have passed into nothing except that Celtic social media saw it, highlighted it and me and my old man watched it with astonishment because it was so blatant.
Credit goes to HenrikLubo on Twitter for highlighting this; the moment when a Celtic player is penalised instead of the Ross County keeper.
Watch the incident at this link.
David Munro the first of many “I make the rules up as I go on” unbelievable ?@ScottishFA? this guy needs to go on an in-depth training course to learn the rules of the game….? pic.twitter.com/MX1MzVxL7V
— Henriklubo (@Henriklubo) November 13, 2022
The ball comes in from a set-piece, and the keeper plucks it out of the air.
He then puts the ball down on the ground, and thus into play.
Kyogo hovers nearby, and when he realises that Kyogo is going to try and move in on him he picks the ball up again.
Which he isn’t allowed to do, of course. Which every sophomoric watcher of the game, every kid who plays it in school, every official attending his first seminar, knows full well.
Yet the referee runs into the penalty box and, to the astonishment of the Celtic players nearby, moves Kyogo on, and awards the free kick to Ross County.
It is bewildering to watch, because it’s one of the most basic, well understood rules in football; once that ball is down on the deck it’s fair game. Kyogo had every right to hover and to wait. In picking the ball up the keeper – not our striker – has committed an offence and should have been penalised with an indirect free kick.
It is absolutely mind-boggling that the referee either didn’t know that or chose to ignore it and give the free kick the other way.
This is ten minutes into the game, a game in which he awarded Ross County nearly every decision, as summed up in the match stats; a team with 25% of the possession got 75% of the free kicks.
You could not make that up.
That appalling call, that shambles of a decision, in a very real way set up the whole afternoon.
It was an early sign of what we’d have to put up with. Who needs VAR to mess up your day when the rules we thought we understood are being disregarded entirely, from the off?
This is what we were up against. This is what we’re always up against.
One of our games the orange ref also allowed an opposition player to stay on the field after receiving treatment, instead of being made to leave the pitch, I don’t want to say blatant cheating, but it was blatant cheating.
The keeper should have been red-carded. Because it was a deliberate foul to prevent a goal scoring opportunity for Kyogo. All possible red cards are supposed to be looked at by VAR.
Wouldn’t fall into a DOGSCO category and you’d be hard pressed to justify a red in an indirect free kick situation. Probably not even bookable really, but definitely an indirect free kick.
The ref was way out of his depth school boy error or was it the standard or referees this season is the worst I have seen in a long long time nobody is questioning Thier decisions so they keep getting away with them Celtic f.c. need to clamp down on this ask the sfa what are they doing to ensure fair play
So, what is going to happen, big deal if Celtic eat shit.
9 points ahead now.
Let’s have a policy of walking off on these poisoned mentlity creeps.
Who pays the wages for these officials that are Huns, if its Celtic refuse to pay them.
Celtic now need to be bastrds to these wee shit bags.
Instead of moaning the obvious let’s do something.
Shows how bad Rangers are with the balance tilted in their direction.
I am suspicious of the St. MIRRAN arsehole who gave away a penalty for no reason other than to give Rangers a stick on.
Another thing on the O’Riely penalty, it was clearly out of the box,but no one has commented.
Yes, there was one replay of the incident from the other end of the park – from behind the goals.
Only saw it the once, but from that angle it looked like Matt was clearly outside the box.
Even in the still picture, it looks suspiciously outside the box?
This was the worst decision of the day as far as I was concerned.
We all know that VAR would be used against us and that penalty decisions are always debatable however this wasn’t debatable by any stretch of the imagination.
Players are told and taught from an early age to play to the whistle. Now though we can have players who can play to a pretend whistle and the referees go along with it.
In this instance the referee, if he thought it was a foul, played the advantage because the goalkeeper had the ball in his possession. There was no whistle to award a foul. If the keeper then decides not to take that advantage that is his own fault.
That is like saying a forward and a goalkeeper go for a ball . The forward knocks the ball to the side of the goalie leaving one of his teammates with an open goal from three yards out. The keeper then takes out the first forward and the referee waves play on, giving ghe advantage to the second player with an open goal.
The second player doesn’t knock the ball into the goal however, he stops the ball and picks it up.
Would the referee give a foul or a penalty.
The whole process was a disgrace on Saturday and for that the guy should be demoted permanently. He bottled it completely but it is interesting that they can always suddenly develop a spine when it comes to awarding decisions against Celtic.
I agree that Celtic should be highlighting this to the governing bodies, and the referee should be duly reprimanded. If not, we should inform them that we will not accept him as an official in any of our future matches.
Look at the reaction of Kyogo and Turnbull, they clearly are aware of the rule. The keeper panics and picks the ball up. It was a situation that David Munro was not anticipating, so, instead of applying the rules of the game he panics as well, and takes the easy option of awarding a free kick to County. He probably told the keeper that he blew for a foul on him from the intial Celtic corner. But no one heard it .
If questioned, Munro will make up a story and stick to it.
The cheating that Celtic are now be subjected to is truly diabolical. The suits in our boardroom are of a timerous nature. I have emailed UEFA and advised them that Scottish referees are both incompetent and corrupt. We need to deprive our refereeing fraternity of career advancement. And the time to do it is when we are nine points clear, not nine points behind.
It’s a rigged ball game alright but we can’t walk off the pitch without being sanctioned. We can’t break the rules, they’d just love us to do that and give a 20-point deduction or something similar. No ammunition should be given, Complain to SFA, then EUFA, then Court of Arbitration, if our complaint is unsuccessful. The SFA are going to show no sympathy and probably not EUFA but by starting there we raise the profile of the cheating that goes on in Scotland and continually bring it up in everything we do.
Sitting on our hands is no longer an option.
Nothing will change unless refs and officials are from outside of Scotland ,far too many are affiliated in some with masonic or orange lodges so the bias will continue,
Celtic should notify Hawkeye Sport that the SFA are making a mockery of their priduct.
+ The Ross County player receives treatment from their physio and then stays on the park to try and get on the end of the resulting free kick. You can’t make this S*** up . Blatant cheating if ever there was.
Haksabanovic was booked so player didn’t need to go off.
Andy, whilst your understanding of the rule change is correct and your explanation sound… Unfortunately he booked Turnbull instead of Haksabanovic. Which is one of 2 occasions in the game he booked entirely the wrong person.
James is your father old enough to remember tinny Warton a referee from the sixtys who would give the masonic hand shake to the captain of who ever the celtic was playing even back then the dirty corupt bastards where at it away back then and the celtic board wouldn’t call it out the club is terefide from the ludge bastards who run our game.
I remember further back even to the days of Jack Mowat of Burnside, Gordon of Inverness, Davidson of Airdrie (they got their full title in those days) as well as Wharton, who was built for standing motionless. Wharton was called “Tiny”. The only tiny thing about him was his IQ.
They, if possible, were even worse in those days. All unsupervised total bigots with a sick hatred for Celtic and all catholics.
There were no supervisors in those days. They, as now, just made up their own rules as the situation arose. It sometimes
forced the likes of Sean Fallon and Bertie Auld to take the law into their own hands in answer to their bigoted actions.
Jimmy McGrory taking Celtic to second in the league was a bigger feat than Struth or Symon winning the league. In fact,
it was them, rather than McGrory himself, that caused him to be considered a failure.
Talking about supervisors: where are all the referee supervisors when this mockery is being carried out now during every Celtic game on a weekly basis? They always try and “prove” themselves to be right by sending for the English soup-taker,
Dermot Gallagher, with the Irish/catholic sounding name, to show that their opinions aren`t bigoted.
Aye diabolical decision. Amazin how all these radio and tv pundits, as always, would actually rather have everybody believe, the standard of refereein up here truly IS that bad, than entertain the notion somethin a lot deeper and sinister (corrupt) is goin on. Oh and btw, just coincidence these ‘honest mistakes’ are happenin weekly against one team, ours.
As long as the plc makes a profit with full house every week they care not a jot .£££ matters more that the rules
What is the Celtic Board doing about this?
One of the most obvious ‘wrong’ decisions, which typifies why we have a disproportionate number of free kicks awarded against us, was very early in the game when O’Riley was penalised when he perfectly legally dispossessed the county player in their own half to start a very promising move: too promising for the liking of the biased ref obviously.
Spot on. From that moment on there was clearly quite a different game going on. Spectators should be incandescent at a rigged scenario which is also an invitation to organised gambling.
As I said earlier. This will be a penalty season. Those we don’t get, those given against us and those gifted to rangers.
Tom Boyd and that Cuddihy fella spotted that right away. There was a whole bunch of inexplicable decisions. The problem is they get forgotten about when Celtic win and if we drop points we’re bad losers.
Not sure what we can do because this isn’t new.