Rugby Park VAR given whistle for Celtic’s trip to Dens Park

MacDermid will take charge of this weekend’s match against Steven Pressley’s side, with Dougie Potter and Chris Rae operating as his assistant referees. Gavin Duncan will oversee VAR operations at Clydesdale House, with Sean Carr providing support as his assistant VAR.

This will be MacDermid’s first time refereeing a Celtic fixture this season, having previously overseen Dundee in their 1-0 loss to St Mirren in Paisley last month.

Last campaign, the 32-year-old officiated three of Celtic’s domestic fixtures, beginning with the Hoops’ 4-0 victory over St Johnstone at Celtic Park last December.

He later took charge of Celtic’s 4-1 victory over Ross County in Dingwall in January before being the man in the middle for Brendan Rodgers’ side’s 5-2 triumph against St Mirren in March.

MacDermid was VAR for Celtic’s controversial encounter against Kilmarnock at Rugby Park in September where Sunday’s whistler sent referee John Beaton over to the monitor to have a look at Lewis Mayo’s handball.

This resulted in Beaton giving a penalty kick and Kelechi Iheanacho stepping up to secure three important points for the Scottish champions at a tough away venue.

It took a few weeks, perhaps even a month for Killie boss Stuart Kettlewell to get over the decision, but SFA Head of Refereeing Willie Collum clarified the call in the VAR Review Show last Friday.

“It’s a really debatable incident, this,” Collum said. “The big thing for the VAR here is about the arm being up. If the shot goes direct here, and hits Lewis Mayo without a deflection, it’s 100 per cent a penalty kick. Even in this situation with this deflection, in law, you can justify the penalty.”

“However, Gordon [Duncan], I’ve said from day one, we’ve spoken about stakeholders’ views. Nobody accepted this. The feeling is that this should not be punished going forward. Moving forward, if this exact same decision happened again, we do not want to award a penalty kick.”

With a big month ahead across the Premiership, Premier Sports League Cup and the Europa League, hopefully we will be talking about reinvigorated Celtic performances and results on the pitch rather than Willie Collum or VAR controversy for that matter.

And after having to endure the usual International break boredom it all be great to have club football back in Sunday at the start of an intense seven game run of vital fixtures across three competitions that can really shape our season.

There are a few players returning with slight injury concerns but hopefully everyone is fit and good to go for the trip to Dens Park on Sunday for the midday kick-off.

Conor Spence

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