Controversial penalty call victim Keith Watson has been told to forget about it.
St Johnstone full-back Richard Foster still can’t believe referee Craig Thomson pointed to the spot to tee-up a second-half Celtic equaliser, with super sub Moussa Dembele converting the first of his hat-trick in Sunday’s 5-2 win.
Former Aberdeen and Rangers defender Foster (31) was outfoxed by Celtic full-back Kieran Tierney before Watson came to his aid.
And he got a birds-eye view of an incident which left Saints players and manager Tommy Wright raging.
Foster said: “It’s not a penalty. Keith did everything he could to avoid giving one away.
“Look, even if the ball hits you from five yards away and your arm is by your side there’s nothing you can do. It doesn’t just disappear.
“It is a terrible decision. I don’t know what more Keith is expected to do to get his arm out of the way of Tierney’s cross.
“It was bad for the team but a really sore one for Keith. It was a sickener for him after scoring a great goal.
“It put a real dampener on it for him. But he can’t be overly bothered by it because we all know he did nothing wrong.
“He has had his injury troubles but has come back into the team and did really well again. He handled Scott Sinclair brilliantly.
“We told him he did everything that was asked of him. He scored, defended really well and there was nothing he could have done about that penalty decision.
“Keith had come across to help me out, which he did.
“It was actually a poor cross from Tierney which hit Keith on the side and he gets a penalty awarded against him. He shouldn’t be too disheartened by that because his overall performance was great.
“He knew at the time what had happened and explained it to the lads later in the dressing room. He was vindicated by what everyone saw on TV.
“The referee said Keith’s hands were up but it clearly hit him on the side and then skiffed the elbow. It was just a ridiculous decision.
“And I thought we could have had a penalty at the other end. Danny Swanson wins the ball, turns Scott Brown and he kicks his leg away and that’s a penalty.
“I know their penalty soon after only made it 2-2 but it changed the impetus of the match and we definitely felt deflated because we knew it wasn’t a penalty.”
Foster picked up a booking after rounding on the referee.
But he insisted: “My words to the referee were: ‘You couldn’t wait to give that penalty.’
“I didn’t shout and I didn’t swear.
“When I asked him why I had been booked he said he’d given me a chance. A chance for what?”
Foster insisted Saints have plenty of positives to take into Saturday’s William Hill Scottish Cup clash with Partick Thistle.
He said: “Now we have Partick again, this time in the cup, and there were plenty of positives.
“For a large part of that game we handled a very, very good Celtic side.
“You see the pace they have when they break. It’s like the Red Arrows coming at you. But we contained them well for long periods.
“It will be a completely different type of game against Partick.
“Thistle were probably the better team in last week’s league game but we managed to scrape through 1-0.
“We will be looking to put in the Celtic standard of performance against Thistle.
“The biggest plus was our overall performance against Celtic. We scored two goals, passed and defended well and kept a good shape.
“If we do that against Partick hopefully it will be enough to see us into the next round of the cup.”
