Willie Collum has broken down the decision behind James Forrest’s overturned penalty in Celtic’s Scottish Cup semi-final win over St Johnstone at Hampden.
The incident caused plenty of debate, with many believing Forrest was fouled inside the box after first avoiding one challenge and then appearing to be impeded by an arm across his chest. On the field, referee Calum Scott initially pointed to the spot, but after a VAR review led by Andrew Dallas, the decision was reversed.
Collum, speaking on the VAR Review Show, explained that the original penalty award was based on a supposed foul from the first challenge inside the area. However, he revealed that there was “no contact or minimal contact” in that initial action.
“The challenge the referee punished — there’s no contact, or minimal contact, I actually don’t think there’s any,” Collum stated. “The Celtic player goes down, and there has been talk about an arm coming across, but that’s not enough in terms of a threshold for us to award a penalty kick here.”
Collum stressed that the review was based specifically on the referee’s explanation that he awarded the penalty for the first block, not for the upper-body contact that followed.
“If there was a feeling that the second challenge with the arm met the threshold for a penalty kick, you would need to bring the referee to the monitor and say, ‘Is this enough for you?’ Otherwise, it’s VAR re-refereeing the match.
“But I want to reiterate again, and be quite clear, the upper body contact there is not enough for us for a penalty kick.”
Ultimately, the VAR team deemed the arm across Forrest not significant enough to justify a penalty and upheld the reversal.
In the end, it didn’t matter, with Celtic crushing to a 5-0 win to book themselves a slot in the final at the end of May. The Hoops will face Aberdeen as they look to secure Brendan Rodgers’ third treble over his two spells as Celtic manager.
