Scottish football rocked by fresh refereeing drama as John McGinn left aghast by ‘worst decision I’ve seen’
Dan Casey of Motherwell was sent off during Friday night’s 1-1 William Hill Premiership draw against Kilmarnock, sparking new refereeing drama in Scottish football.
Liam Gordon’s first goal for the team put Motherwell up at halftime, but Killie responded through Liam Polworth. However, the main topic of conversation was the altercation between Casey and Danny Armstrong at minute 78.
Referee Chris Graham did not hesitate to issue a red card after Armstrong seemed to provoke the Motherwell defender into clutching his shirt close to his neck.
After being brought over to the pitchside monitor, Graham maintained his initial decision despite VAR being involved, most likely because of how harsh the dismissal was.
Scotland player John McGinn even responded to the decision by writing on X, “Can’t watch that game anymore.” I’ve never seen a worse decision in my puff.
The incident comes amid the fallout from Sunday’s League Cup final which saw SFA head of referees Willie Collum publicly admit that an “unacceptable” error was made in failing to award Rangers a crucial penalty during their defeat to Celtic at Hampden.
Irate Well boss Stuart Kettlewell told BBC Scotland: “Questionable is an understatement. I always try and be honest. I am sick and fed up of it.
I’ve been told there’s been three key errors in our last five games. I try to move on and hope better times are ahead then it come to tonight and it’s by far the worst of them all. It’s quite incredible.
The fact that he was sent to the monitor implies that he is mistaken. Kilmarnock’s bench has alerted me to the fact that this will be overturned.
And after seeing it multiple times, the referee believes he has it correct. If we’re considering that kind of behavior a red card, I’m worried about the game in this nation. We’d like it to improve. Such decisions aren’t advancing the cause.
Kilmarnock manager Derek McInnes agreed with his counterpart Kettlewell and admitted he expected Graham to overturn his decision to send off Casey.
“I actually don’t think there was enough in the red card incident for it to stand,” McInnes said. “We were actually getting ready for Casey to come back on from what we saw on our monitor.
“The referee then maintained it was a red card, but I can think of three or four refs off the top of my head who would have dealt with it differently because of talking to the players.”
