No-One Was Wailing About The Handball Rule When Celtic Were Being Penalised By it.

In our household, criticism of Kenny Dalglish is almost considered sacrilege, as once upon a time he did an immense thing for our family.

So it gives me no pleasure whatsoever to express my annoyance at his intervention on the Ibrox penalty award last weekend, the one that went against them, the one decision that was not remotely as bad as the one that they were given and which no-one in the media has even bothered about since.

This is the latest rambling nonsense about how the handball rule needs changed. Which I find hilarious as nobody made any such suggestion earlier in the season when a couple of them went against us and very much for the club at Ibrox.

Not one of these people has suggested what the change should be, but they seem to be hinting obliquely at giving refs more freedom to interpret things as they want.

Amazing how we got here. A few decisions in favour of Celtic, and one against Ibrox.

Funny that, isn’t it?

This whole debate is absolutely nonsense.

The reason is it is an utter nonsense is that refs are allowed their own subjective interpretations of what it is that they saw, which is why Goldson got away with three in a row whilst Celtic’s Matt O’Riley got penalised.

If every ball to hand in the box resulted in a penalty, there would be none of this garbage. But no-one is calling for that, because removing subjectivity takes power away from refs, and that’s what nobody wants to do, although it’s clearly what needs to happen.

Subjectivity. Yesterday’s calls against Livingston came down to the same thing, and they were horror show decisions as well.

Nobody wants to face what that means. Instead everyone is suddenly focussed on one decision – the first penalty against them in more than 50 games – instead of looking at the underlying issue and not just another symptom of it.

All these people see are symptoms, and they misdiagnose the condition over and over again. I am tired of this. We should all be tired of it. The sooner the rulebook is clarified on handball decisions the better we will be and the only way to do it is either to make every touch of the hand a penalty or to make sure that none of them are.

Then Goldson can play auxiliary goalkeeper all he wants.

Neither is a good solution but they are better ones than that which Dalglish and others appear to be proposing, which it seems to me is to allow refs even more freedom to “interpret” the rulebook than they have right now.

Which will certainly not make things better, only a Hell of a lot worse.