'Imagine if that happened in Celtic v Rangers final': Former referee hits out at 'cheap road' technology after big weekend incident

St Mirren defeated Dundee 2-1 at the weekend - but the game did not pass without controversy.

The Buddies believed they had scored a third goal when an attempt from Alex Greive was cleared by Dees captain Joe Shaughnessy from behind the goalline. Conroy believes the ball was “clearly over” and while the incident had no bearing on the destination of the three points, the ex-grade one whistler says that better technology needs to be brought in as soon as possible.

Conroy said: “As always we decided to go down the cheap road and not pay for the technology and the results of that were glaringly shown at the weekend in the St Mirren-Dundee game. All the top leagues in Europe have goal-line technology and if you decide to bring in technology to your league then you have to go the whole hog or it can hang you out to dry.

“It looked to me the ball was clearly over. I’m surprised that Nick Walsh as VAR didn’t award the goal but he obviously wasn’t completely convinced Can you imagine if this scenario unfolded in the last minute of a cup final between Celtic and Rangers? It would be bedlam. We need to get goal-line tech in as quickly as possible or other teams are going to suffer the way St Mirren did.”

Conroy also believes referee Willie Collum made a glaring error in St Johnstone’s 2-0 defeat by Ross County and should have given Liam Gordon a second yellow for his challenge on Yan Dhanda. He said: “At the very least it was a yellow card and that would resulted in a red for Liam Gordon. There was no excuse. The incident happened right in front of Willie. I think Gordon’s own team-mate felt the full force of the challenge as well. That’s two out of two for Willie in the first two games of the season. I felt he should have a penalty to Rangers for Stuart Findlay’s holding of Connor Goldson. He just seems to get so much leeway from the SFA. Guys coming through the ranks wouldn’t be able to get away with two errors like that in consecutive weeks. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s back involved again this weekend.

Conroy also insists that Kilmarnock defender Stuart Findlay was lucky in his team’s goalless draw at Tynecastle against Hearts. “As it happens Findlay was at it again on Sunday,” continued Conroy, speaking to https://altindex.com. He had both arms round Lawrence Shankland and pulled him to the floor. I thought that was a penalty to Hearts. I was really surprised that Alan Newlands didn’t ask David Dickinson to have a look at that one. It just shows you that the system is certainly not infallible.