Why let a little white lie get in the way of a good story?
Harmless enough when regaling tales of adventure, however, if you are paid by a public broadcaster to present the facts and provide accurate analysis then you should probably stick to a truthful representation of the facts.
Not so for John Robertson and Michael Stewart who were working for the BBC at the weekend, although the latter has previous and we shouldn’t be surprised.
Robertson claimed that Borna Barisic should have seen red for grabbing Josh Ginnelly by the throat well, he should have been, if that’s what he had actually done – but he didn’t.
Two yellow cards were dished out for an incident that was little more than handbags, Ginnelly was just daft enough to get involved when he was already on a booking.
As for Stewart, he tried to say that he didn’t think that Connor Goldson’s handball should be a penalty but in the eyes of the laws of the game it is. Except, that’s also a fabrication.
The four biggest aspects of the handball law that officials are instructed to base their decisions on are proximity, position of the arm (is it in a “natural” one depending on the movement of the player), intent and whether or not the player’s team gains an advantage/stops a goal from the ball striking their arm – not a single one of these points apply to when Gary Mackay-Steven’s cut back hit Goldson’s hand from a couple of yards away with his arm at the side of his body, maybe if he had leant towards the pass, but he didn’t.
The law categorically backs Nick Walsh’s decision.
Unfortunately, VAR won’t help this nonsense either because as long as pundits make stuff up or voice their opinion as fact, we’ll be stuck in a vortex that sees every decision that benefits Rangers analysed to death whilst other much bigger/more obvious errors are ignored on a weekly basis.