St Mirren coach says he'll be consulting Willie Collum about controversial VAR disallowed goal against Hearts
Steven Robinson was not in the dugout as he was still serving his touchline ban from the Aberdeen defeat.
St Mirren assistant coach, Brian Kerr has felt aggrieved by a particular decision in the Hearts draw.
In the 28th minute, the home side opened the scoring in spectacular fashion through an acrobatic effort from Dan Nlundulu, however Hearts responded five minutes later through a customary Lawrence Shankland finish. A Freckleton header then gave The Buddies the lead, before the defender thought he struck again, only for it to be controversially called offside.
Claudio Braga then levelled the score when the Portuguese fan favourite nodded in after Alexandros Kyziridis’ effort struck the crossbar. In the dying minutes Pierre Landry Kabore thought he’d won it for Hearts but VAR adjudged there to be an offside in the build-up.
The explanation given for the Freckleton disallowed goal given by referee, Matthew MacDermid was that an ‘impact offside’ occured as Mark O’Hara was deemed to have impeded Shankland in the build-up, however Kerr believes the goal should’ve stood. To add to this, the St Mirren assistant also believes, had the call went their way, they’d have went on to win the game.
‘We’ll need to speak to Willie about it’
In his post-match press conference, Kerr stated: “I think it’s been a very eventful night. Delighted with the performance of the boys, disappointed with the result. We're still yet to see an angle that shows us why the goal's been chopped off. Their interpretation on it is that it’s an impact offside from Mark O'Hara. We can't see any contact, we've seen a few different angles of it. We're yet to see an angle that shows us why the goal's been chopped off.
“Miguel Freckleton scores the goal clearly onside and they reckon there's some kind of contact. I don't know if any of you have seen that but we certainly can't see any contact. The explanation they gave us was that Matthew (MacDermid) thought was an ‘impact offside’, so that's their interpretation of it.
“It's something that we'd probably as a club need to speak to Willie (Collum) about, regarding the rules and why it's been disallowed. Disappointing, but I've got to remember that it was an excellent performance against a top-half side who were flying high and came off the back here and an excellent result against Celtic.”
‘A rule I’ve never heard of’
St Mirren defender, Freckleton believes he should’ve had a brace on the day but was also happy to take a point against a rampant Jambos side. Next up for The Buddies is a trip to Hampden where they face Motherwell in the League Cup semi-final.
Freckleton said: “obviously coming off the back of three losses, it’s important to try and not make it another loss. We're frustrated that we didn't come away with the win, but obviously they're top of the league and they're there for a reason. But I feel like we held them against it, we did well.
“I've seen it back, obviously the ref said it's subjectively offside but it's a rule that I've not heard of. But the VAR has intervened and called it offside, so we’ve just got to go again really. It's a difficult one to take, but we’ll move on.”