The Scottish FA's head of refereeing Willie Collum insists there was no mistake made when Celtic's Alistair Johnston avoided a red card in the win over Rangers.
The Canadian right back went in hard on loanee winger Mikey Moore and looked to catch him firmly on the ankle with his sliding challenge, but was only shown a yellow card by referee Nick Walsh.
The VAR team watched the incident back and decided there was no reason to ask him to reconsider.
The full VAR audio has now been released, while Collum has backed the process which saw Johnston stay on the field.
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VAR audio
VAR: Okay. The contact's on the foot. The foot's just over there, no other contact. Happy with that? Top of the foot.
AVAR: I agree.
VAR: The attacker's feet were seen to be down first. Then he's come sideways; it's angled across. The contact's on the foot. It's not high up. Happy with that. Okay, confirmed. Yellow card, reckless tackle, Celtic number two. Exactly as described, Nick. Exactly as described.
AVAR: The contact is mainly on the top of the foot and maybe a very small glance above that.
Willie Collum explanation
Gordon Duncan: Willie, let's remind ourselves of what we're looking for if it was to be a red card: serious foul play, excessive force, endangering an opponent. Why did this not tick the boxes?
Willie Collum: You're right, Gordon. It's a really good description. We're looking for excessive force. We're looking for brutality. Ultimately, we're looking for endangering the safety of an opponent. We don't think it meets that criteria. We agree with the referee that it's reckless. Also, the VAR check is reckless. There is contact more in the top of the foot with the heel here, but there's no doubt—you can even hear the VAR talking about it at the end of the check—about glancing contact on the shin, not full studs but glancing contact with the studs. We need to move away from the scenario that every time there's contact above the foot we categorically say it's a red card. There are two points I want to make here. The first one is about glancing contact, Gordon. The other one is about an expression used recently by UEFA; it's quite an interesting concept about on-off contact. When you hear that, you think what exactly does that mean? We're not talking about contact where it's on and it's pushing through, full foot, full studs, forcing the ankle bend. A bit similar to the challenge at Tannadice for the red card shown to the Dundee United player. Also, the difference in that tackle was that two players are face-on to each other. I think an important point of this tackle as well is that when Alastair Johnston enters into the tackle, he's off the ground, he's lunging. He's in a dangerous position. But then how does he arrive? Much lower than when he initially enters the tackle. He's not head-on to Moore at that point. Moore is coming towards him directly at that point. Also, when he arrives, his leg is bent. So when the VAR is checking this, they have to say, "Is there anything more we would show the referee here that he hasn't been able to see to make it a red card?" For us, it meets the criteria for reckless.
Gordon Duncan: I appreciate that is a key consideration, because you hear the VAR saying to the referee, "That's exactly as you've described it." The only way you're getting called over to the monitor is if it's not as you've described it and they can show something different. However, to go back to contact, is there not quite a considerable amount of contact higher than the boot?
Willie Collum: I think the VAR makes that clear point, Gordon, at the end. You can hear him say "slight" at the end. I think for a lot of people that looks like quite a lot of contact above that boot. But we would say it's glancing contact. It's not full studs on the leg bending over the leg a bit like the tackle at Dundee United. So again, if we're looking for small details here, we don't think that looking any further at that we're going to justify a red card. We think that's a yellow card. What I would say, if you use a still image here... say I brought you to the monitor right now and I showed you that still image. We're criticized for still images. Sometimes we need to use them for point of contact like the handball earlier, or if the referee wanted a point of contact in the tackle. That doesn't tell the full story. If you look at the other angle, it shows the bend in the leg as well. That's why there's a danger as well. If you show that as a still image, I could sell a red card every day of the week. Gordon, I've said as well previously about tackles, there are elements within tackles that we've shown this season that if a referee was to show a red card on field you could of course support it. You could support the red card. But here we also think showing a yellow card, there's enough evidence to support that we don't need to upgrade that.
Gordon Duncan: And since I used that against you earlier, the KMI panel unanimously backed the decision on that one anyway.
Willie Collum: That's a good point, and I know you say that jokingly, but the KMI will also support decisions where the wider sense people don't agree. I understand that explanation that people might say "I don't agree" or "the goal points are higher up" or "he's using different criteria." But we need to be honest in what we're applying in terms of the criteria. We also tell the KMI panel why we apply criteria. That's important.
