Celtic's Controversial Match at Ibrox in 2009

Peter Grant has revealed that Celtic received an SFA phone call in 2009 admitting that they had been denied three penalties in one match at Ibrox.

Tony Mowbray took Celtic to Ibrox in October 2009 with Craig Thomson in charge of the Glasgow Derby for the first time. Grant was the first team coach with Mark Venus Mowbray’s assistant manager.

Kenny Miller scored in the 8^th and 16^th minutes but Celtic never gave up, constantly pushing at the Rangers defence where David Weir was unable to cope with the pace of the Celtic forward line of Shaun Maloney, Scott McDonald and Aiden McGeady.

The lumbering former Scotland defender was getting caught out time and time again but two early penalty box fouls went unpunished before Thomson finally awarded Celtic a 25^th minute penalty for a foul by Sasa Papac that McGeady scored from.

At that time the SFA were well aware of the financial problems developing at Ibrox, they turned a blind eye to the dual contracts knowing that playing in the group stage of the Champions League was essential to keep HBOS sweet with the overdraft and the growing tax issues dating back to 2000 and the signings of Tore Andre Flo from Chelsea and Ronald de Boer from Barcelona.

Those two weren’t at Ibrox for the weather and the opportunity to test out the local golf courses. Eventually a £2.7m tax bill emerged, it was never paid.

Mowbray wasn’t a good fit as Celtic manager but until his sacking in March his side had been subjected to some outrageous refereeing decisions, prompting Tom Boyd into the memorable phrase of ‘honest mistakes’.

Hugh Dallas was Head of Refereeing at the time, Gordon Smith was CEO of the SFA from June 2007 to April 2010, he was later appointed Director of Football of Rangers.

34 minutes 15seconds

Grant: The St Mirren game (0-4, Mowbray’s last match in charge) we deserved to be sacked for that.

McGregor: I was there that night, it had been a turbulent, inconsistent season. You couldn’t get a win over Rangers, unlucky, you know, there was a lot of misfortune.

Grant: What do you mean misfortune? If you talk back now…

McGregor: Fortune (reference to the goal disallowed against Rangers by Steve Conroy to advance his career having claimed to be a Celtic supporter)

Grant: You talk about that, aye, but listen, you are talking about misfortune but we got a phone call, on a Monday morning to say that we should have had three penalty kicks, this was before VAR came in. I think that it was Shaun (Maloney) and Aiden (McGeady) and Zheng Zhi got brought down in the box at Ibrox (probably Mark Wilson in the second half rather than Zhi).

McGregor: Who got the phone call, who was the phone call from?

Grant: The FA, to say that they were three penalty kicks. You’ll never get three more stonewall penalty kicks in your life.

The Scott Brown got sent off (by Dougie McDonald after he had allowed Majid Bougherra to kick Robbie Keane all through the match without any punishment) in the 94^th minute.

Where one of their players should have been sent off prior to it then Scott Brown was sent off at the start of the second half with the head sort of with Kyle Lafferty and they score in the 94^th minute to win the game.

So there are always fine lines but look, there are no excuses but if you are talking about three penalties, we know they are, then it is clarified to you. There are things like that, sometimes that happens.

I’m not making that an excuse, like I said, the St Mirren game I can talk about.

Soon after he added:

Grant: I had no issue with that (getting sacked the day after the St Mirren defeat) there are certain issues that I wasn’t happy with, everybody knows that but they will always remain with me, the people know that were involved knew, what I wasn’t happy with.

I couldn’t hide it, I wasn’t one for hiding it. It say with me a long time, a helluva long time, a lot

McGregor: That would have hurt you for a while.

Grant: Yeah, yeah, of course it did. That was a real tough time

BBC Scotland reported on the match:

Rangers survived a spirited second-half onslaught by Celtic to win the first Old Firm match of the season.

Kenny Miller showed pace and poise to meet a Kris Boyd through ball and slot past Artur Boruc in eight minutes.

Shaun Maloney had a strong appeal for a penalty turned down by Craig Thomson before Miller out-muscled and out-sprinted Glenn Loovens to add a second.

Aiden McGeady scored from the spot after a Sasa Papac trip, but Celtic’s subsequent pressure was not rewarded.

The day after the match the Guardian reported Hugh Dallas saying:

Craig and I have had our post match debrief. Whilst I would compliment Craig for his overall handling of the encounter, he is disappointed at his error of judgment when he decided against awarding a penalty to the visiting team in the 12th minute.

Taking charge of an Old Firm game is both high-profile and challenging. Referees are well aware that their performance will be judged on calling the major decisions correctly. Our referees are fitter than they have ever been and our referees are better prepared for matches than they have ever been.

“We are working each and every day with our top officials to make sure that they are in a position to get the big calls right. However, mistakes are part and parcel of football. I think that it says a lot for the character and professionalism of Craig that he has been more than willing to hold his hands up on this one.

They went public admitting to one penalty ‘mistake’ not the three mentioned in the phone call to Celtic.

That display set Thomson up for a decade at the top level enjoying the top fixtures and lucrative international appointments from his part time side hustle.

Seeing how Thomson had refereed the match at Ibrox in October Conroy went to town when Rangers visited Celtic Park on January 3, disallowing a ‘goal’ from Marco Fortune for a foul on Allan McGregor that only the match referee noticed then bottling out of sending off Kyle Lafferty for a brutal studs up slide into the shin of Andreas Henkel.

At Ibrox on February 28 Dougie McDonald sent off Brown while failing to punish Bougherra, a month later Mowbray, Grant and Mark Venus were sacked after the 4-0 defeat away to St Mirren.

Rangers played in the group stage of the Champions League in 2010 after winning the 2009/10 SPL title, after losing a qualifier to Malmo the following season they went into administration followed by liquidation.

Full match ‘highlights’.

1 minute 13 seconds for Weir foul on Maloney, note Thomson hand up for play on.

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