Celtic penalty right, Hearts wrongly denied – SFAImage source, SNSImage caption, Alexandros Kyziridis and Hearts were left frustrated by a draw at Motherwell on 9 MayPublished2 hours agoCeltic’s late penalty at Motherwell was the correct decision but Hearts were wrongly denied a spot-kick at Fir Park, the Scottish FA’s head of refereeing has reported.Giving his monthly report on video assistant referee (VAR) calls,, external addressed John Beaton’s decision to award an added-time penalty for handball against Sam Nicholson in Well’s 3-2 defeat by Celtic, with Kelechi Iheanacho scoring the winner from the spot on 13 May, and an unsuccessful penalty claim by Hearts in their 1-1 draw against Motherwell on 9 May.
Tawanda Maswanhise appeared to trip Hearts’ Alexandros Kyziridis but referee Steven McLean ruled no foul, despite reviewing the incident at the VAR monitor.
Long-time leaders Hearts ultimately lost the Scottish Premiership to Celtic by two points but the Tynecastle side finished with a slightly better goal difference.
Collum backed the Celtic penalty at Fir Park, citing “clear evidence” with Nicholson’s hand and arm “in an unnatural position” and the resulting contact “a punishable handball”.
“We fully support what they’ve reached in terms of an outcome,” he added. “We’ve been very consistent with handballs when it goes above shoulder height.”
On the Maswanhise-Kyziridis incident, the VAR team’s view was that a foul had taken place but released audio of the discussion between the officials revealed referee McLean saying: “I’ve not seen enough.”
And Collum commented: “Once the referee comes to the monitor, the expected decision and the preferred decision here would be a penalty kick to be awarded.
“My personal opinion is that that’s a penalty kick. There’s some debate in refereeing I would say and we will discuss it with our referees pre-season.”
