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Hibs player rages about one incident v Rangers, slams 'Nervous' Willie Collum
Hibernian player Joe Newell has been raging about Willie Collum’s refusal to award Hibs a penalty in their 1-0 defeat to Rangers at Ibrox on Saturday.
Ianis Hagi scored the match-winning goal for the Light Blues but could have also conceded a penalty when his high boot almost caught Newell in the face.
However, Collum failed to award a spot-kick for Hibs and that has left Newell questioning whether the referee bottled it in the big occasion at Ibrox.
“I think it is one of those that if it is on the half-way line it is a foul all day long,” Newell said, as quoted by the Herald.
“I have gone in to head it and I can’t actually tell you what has happened. I think he has booted the other side of the ball so I don’t know if there is actual contact, if there is a high boot it is dangerous play. It is a free-kick anywhere else on the pitch.
“If it is a penalty I think the ref is a wee bit more nervous to give it but I think it is a foul.
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“I said to him, ‘how is that not a thing?’ and he said I had ducked down but I don’t know. It is one of them. Referees have a tough job but if it is on the halfway line, he probably gives it. There was shout from a corner for us as well. To get results here you need to play and to get a wee bit of luck and decisions to go your way as well and we didn’t get them.”
It wasn’t the only moment of controversy
We don’t want to resort to whataboutery – even though we’re about to – but there was also a clear penalty at the other end of the pitch when Ryan Porteous caught Kemar Roofe with a studs-up challenge.
BBC Sportscene didn’t even choose to cover that in their highlights package yet they managed to plaster the Hagi-Newell incident all over viewers’ television screens and on social media.
We don’t want to believe there is an agenda against Rangers at the BBC but they do not make it easy for us to not think that.
Hagi’s high-boot could have been a penalty kick.
You see them given all the time even when players stick their heads into challenges when they really shouldn’t.
At least, on this occasion, Collum has gone with a decision that should be right but we’ve seen so many times that something like that is unacceptable in the modern game.
We were lucky.
In other Rangers news, fans are furious with BBC Sportscene’s coverage.