St Mirren to appeal Haining red card

ST MIRREN manager Gus MacPherson will seek justice for Will Haining by appealing against the red card shown to the defender against Celtic.

However, MacPherson will have to rely on the help of referee Eddie Smith, the man he criticised after the game.

During the Paisley side's Premier League opener at Celtic Park on Sunday, Smith awarded a spot-kick for the home side following a challenge by Haining on Netherlands striker Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink.

After Haining was sent off for denying the Dutchman a clear goalscoring opportunity, Celtic midfielder Barry Robson scored from the spot to give the reigning SPL champions a barely deserved win.

MacPherson had criticised Smith last season after he had awarded a dubious free-kick to Celtic at Love Street which had ended with Shunsuke Nakamura scoring a late winner for the visitors.

On Sunday he claimed the referee had winked at him during the second half and suggested the gesture was intended to irritate him.

St Mirren wasted no time in deciding to contest the red card, but if Smith refuses to accept he made a mistake at the weekend – as some television shots indicate – then the appeal will be automatically dismissed.

MacPherson explained that, although he could understand why Smith had pointed to the spot, he believes the official called it wrong.

"We are appealing on behalf of Will Haining because he feels it was an injustice and he is down about the decision," said the St Mirren manager.

"I have watched the incident from various angles and I can see how Eddie Smith made the decision from the view that he had. But one view shows that Will Haining didn't foul Vennegoor of Hesselink.

"The Celtic player has a handful of Haining's shirt and he actually loses his balance. So Eddie Smith has to look at it and decide if he got it wrong."

MacPherson yesterday refused to continue his war of words with the Scottish Football Association regarding his allegation he had been singled out at the their summer summit at St Andrews.

MacPherson claimed he had been one of two managers whose faces were shown on a screen at one point during the Scottish referees' annual conference. He admitted he did not know the context but insisted it was "worrying".

The SFA head of referee development, Donald McVicar, has denied MacPherson's allegations, saying: "What Gus said was not true. Gus MacPherson was not even mentioned nor was his face up on any screen.

"What we do is look at video clips and DVDs and look at the good, bad and ugly part of the game to see what we want to improve upon.

"One of the clips we used was of a tackle in a Scottish Cup game (between Rangers and Hibs] and how the two managers, Walter Smith and Mixu Paatelainen, had got involved as a result of that.

"We were looking at the repercussions of the tackle. We were not specifically looking at managers and that was the only time we talked about them – and Gus MacPherson wasn't one of them."

McVicar added that he was not surprised a refereeing controversy had erupted on only the first week of the new season.

He said: "It goes with the territory, that's what happens and we just have to live with that. Referees will never beat the televisions cameras."