[1Wattie]

I`ve followed the game for more than 50 years and for a time was involved in a group, including a retired referee, that looked at many contentious decisions. I should point out that this was not an official group just 8 or 10 players trying to understand how some of the decisions were reached. With the help of the referee we started to see the reasons for certain decisions and on many occasions agreed with them. There were instances where the decision was wrong but our referee always put it down to the huge can of worms that is interpretation.
When he was officiating his attitude was if the ball touches an players hand in their own box it`s a penalty. He also maintained that changes to the criteria made it more difficult and put pressure on referees to make the correct decision every time. The changes were meant to simplify decision making but we have all seen teams suffering from what I consider a much more serious blight on our game INCONSISTENCY. As we saw last night Hibs were denied a penalty after the ball hit the player on BOTH hands and he appeared to swipe the ball away from goals with his right hand.
Out of the top dozen referees probably around half would give a penalty but that one decision could well see Hibs spending at least another season in the Championship.