Welcome To Our World, Celtic

Last updated : 26 August 2009 By Brian Murray
It's a scenario we've seen a thousand times north of the border. A striker goes sprawling inside the box and sixty thousand voices scream for a penalty. The referee's instant instinct is that 60,000 can't be wrong and points to the spot.

The fact that this time it was south of the border and it was Celtic that was on the receiving end of a poor decision will cause a wave of schadenfreude amongst many non-Old Firm fans. We've all seen it all before.

This time it was Eduardo hitting the deck after getting too close to Artur Boruc's aftershave, but he did nothing that Henrik Larsson, Scott McDonald, Maurice Johnston or even the legendary John MacDonald were not happy to indulge in.

With the enthsiastic support behind them, it takes a very strong referee to withstand the onslaught. Which is why strong referees like Hugh Dallas were persecuted as biased against either side, and in such a small country as ours, their domestic lives became intolerable.

Maybe now they will understand something more about a refree's lot, and the natural, but wrong, decisions that referees make. Then again, maybe not.