Rangers v Hibs incident leaves BBC Sportscene pundits in disbelief amid claim laws were wrong
James McFadden claims he “couldn’t believe” Rangers were awarded a penalty against Hibs but then weren’t allowed a retake when the laws were wrongly applied.
The pundit reacted live on BBC Sportscene (30 March) to footage of Scott Wright’s apparent encroachment on the James Tavernier kick, resulting in a disallowed goal and the game continuing, with Neil McCann claiming they had checked the laws of the game before the show and a retake should have been ordered.
David Dickinson had given the Light Blues a controversial first-half penalty after a VAR review for an accidental arm in the face of John Souttar, and Wright smashed in the rebound after David Marshall saved from Tavernier, but the goal was then chopped off by VAR despite the two pundits claim that Hibs players had also encroached.
McCann said (7.47pm): “Scott Wright goes into the box here, you can see his foot, but for me there’s other encroachment by Hibs players, and if there’s two players encroaching, one from either side then I thin I’m right, we’ve looked at it upstairs Faddy, the laws of the game suggest it’s a retake.”
He referred to the instance when “very exact same thing happened” vs Napoli in last season’s Champions League, where there was a retake, claiming this was “identical”.
McFadden added: “If it’s only Scott Wright that steps in then that’s the correct decision but because there’s actually a number of players that are going into the box at the same time then I couldn’t believe first of all it was given a penalty in itself, and the fact that it wasn’t a retake.”
Bizarre sequence can’t stop Rangers victory at Ibrox
The only difference between Wright and the Hibs players was that the Gers winger looked like he may be the only man who had a foot down inside the area, while others may have only been leaning in.
Barely an SPFL game goes by without some sort of controversy over the refereeing and this one was no different, but neither the decision to award the penalty or then disallow the goal ultimately proved key.
Wright was denied a sharply-taken goal to follow up his surprisingly excellent performance against Benfica in the previous game at Ibrox on 14 March so he suffered.
But Tavernier was uneffected by his penalty being saved as he opened the scoring with a wonderful goal from open play soon after, with further strikes from Cyriel Dessers and Rabbi Matondo making the points safe.
That puts the pressure back on Celtic as they travel to Livingston on Sunday, ahead of a huge Old Firm derby at Ibrox next week (7 April).
Philippe Clement needed a strong win after the international break against a dangerous Hibs side heading into the Hoops clash and, despite contentious VAR involvement for both teams, he got it.
In other Rangers news, James Tavernier could now be allowed to make a lucrative exit from Ibrox.
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