Stuart Kettlewell says Willie Collum confessed to yet another penalty blunder – and believes his team should have had a penalty during their seven goal thriller with Dundee United.
It was a weekend dominated by controversial decisions with Rangers up in arms after they weren’t given a spot-kick in the Premier Sports Cup final for an incident involving Liam Scales and Vaclav Cerny. New CEO Patrick Stewart has contacted the SFA for clarity and it’s reported that, after Thursday’s VAR review, the governing body will admit there should have been an intervention. As Record Sport revealed on Tuesday, they have already axed the VAR team of Alan Muir and Frank Connor from this weekend’s matches.
But that’s not the only blunder they will have to face. Kettlewell watched a madcap game from the touchline as Motherwell, leading 3-1 at half-time, went on to win 4-3, surviving late pressure after Louis Moult pulled one back on 87 minutes. But he feels his side should have been more comfortably in front at the break – because they were denied ‘as clear a penalty as you’ll see.’ And he says, after a chat with Collum, that the SFA’s head of refereeing agrees.
Kettlewell said: “I had a really good conversation with Willie on Monday. A short conversation, it was a question from my side of things. There were probably three main incidents in our game. There was a question mark over our fourth goal on whether it hit Apostollos’ arm or not – the pictures that I’ve seen, it looks as if it hits him on his shirt line, which is the defining factor.
“Then there was the penalty for Dundee United that makes it 1-1, and the penalty I believe that we should have had right on the stroke of half-time, which would have given us the opportunity to make the game 4-1. I think we all know the relevance and significance of that.
“It was a good conversation. I’d said to Willie that it should stay between us. But the simple outcome was that we saw the incident the same way. We saw all the incidents the same way. Everyone knows our feeling as a football club is that it was as clear a penalty as you were going to see.”