St Johnstone dodged a VAR bullet in last weekend’s victory over St Mirren, according to Willie Collum.
The SFA’s head of referee operations addressed the controversy surrounding Drey Wright’s penalty box challenge on Elvis Bwomono in February’s VAR Review programme.
With the scoreline still 0-0, referee, Dan McFarlane waved play on after the incident in the first half.
The audio of his conversation revealed McFarlane’s view to be “minimal contact for me, if any.”
VAR backed him up, but Collum believes a spot-kick should have been awarded.
“For us, this is a penalty kick,” he said.
“It should have resulted in VAR intervention.
“Firstly, we want the decision to be correct on field. The referee and the assistant have a part to play here.
“Both of them do communicate, which is important, but the referee says ‘minimal contact’ and the VAR, in our opinion, starts to look for that minimal contact.
“I think the VAR has some doubts because they start to talk about ‘no playing of the ball’. Is it potentially ‘a normal footballing contact?’
“We need to be careful that we don’t rely on phrases and think that covers everything. This is not a normal footballing contact.
“This is a defender who goes to play the ball, doesn’t play the ball and tries to stop the attacker.
“For me, we need to keep it simple.
“It’s easier to explain here why this should be a penalty than numerous different reasons, which are difficult to understand, about why it shouldn’t be a penalty.
“Keep things simple here – this is a penalty kick. If not given on-field, definitely VAR intervention for us.”
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