Stuart Dougal has urged Scottish football to “change its mindset” when it comes to handball penalty decisions.
Willie Collum was back under the microscope this weekend after he awarded Celtic a spot kick against Ross County after being urged by VAR to take a look at the monitor after Cameron Carter-Vickers appeared to head the ball against Alex Iacovitti’s arm when attacking the ball from a cross.
Collum pointed to the spot, and Jota converted deep into first half stoppage time to give the champions a half-time lead in the Highlands. Alexandro Bernabei netted his first Hoops goal five minutes into added time at the end of the second half to maintain his side’s nine point lead at the top of the Premiership table. Staggies boss Malky MacKay was furious at the award, but Dougal warned him and others that they need to accept that the handball rule means these incidents will result in spot kicks every time now.
Asked on BBC Scotland's The Vardict if there was any argument against giving a pen, Dougal said: “Not in my eyes and you have to look at angles. It’s very difficult for the match referee there. He’s blocked and can’t see that. The assistant referee equally and by the laws of the game, that’s a clear handball.
“For anybody that doesn’t think that’s a clear handball, you need to change your mindset. Because this will be given week in, week out while we have VAR.
“I’m sorry to say that when I watched it in real time, I thought: ‘Ooh, there’s something worth looking at there again’. Maybe that’s my referee eye, but it didn’t surprise me that the referee was asked to go and have a look at that again. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that there was only going to be one outcome, and that was a penalty.
“The way I tend to look at it is, if it happened up in the other penalty area, Malky Mackay would be looking for a penalty, I’m absolutely certain about that. Under the current interpretation of the laws of the game, he would be absolutely right to be looking for a penalty.
“It’s a sore one just on half-time. Ross County have held out and the penalty decision goes against them. We can understand that, but I’ll say it again, the mindset has to change. It’s incumbent upon anybody involved in football, not to be criticising referees when they’re giving the right decisions, not to be criticising VAR when they're stepping in to help match officials get the right decisions.
“I also think if the mindset changed, we’d welcome or embrace VAR more and take the positives out of it, not the mistakes it’s making.”
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