{"id":8582,"date":"2026-02-26T00:35:04","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T19:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/2026\/02\/26\/var-debilitating-for-referees-celtics-oneill\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T00:35:04","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T19:05:04","slug":"var-debilitating-for-referees-celtics-oneill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/2026\/02\/26\/var-debilitating-for-referees-celtics-oneill\/","title":{"rendered":"VAR &#8216;debilitating&#8217; for referees &#8211; Celtic&#8217;s O&#8217;Neill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ByLiam McLeodBBC Sport Scotland Commentator in Stuttgart<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Published7 minutes ago<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Martin O&#x27;Neill is of the view VAR  is &quot;debilitating&quot; for officials on the pitch as he branded the Scottish FA process for appealing against decisions &quot;worthless&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, Celtic lost their bid to have Auston Trusty&#x27;s red card against Hibernian overturned.<\/p>\n<p>A club statement was critical of the ruling and called for an urgent review of VAR use, complaining that &quot;VAR again decided to intervene to &#x27;re-referee&#x27; an initial decision&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>Trusty was dismissed after a review of his chop on the arm of Jamie McGrath, while the pair tussled at a corner kick, leaving veteran manager O&#x27;Neill perplexed.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I did the interview after the game and someone asked me if we were going to appeal it and I thought I&#x27;m really not sure about it, the appeals in this day and age are seemingly worthless,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;But when I get the info back from the club at what has been said in VAR I thought yeah, absolutely, because the referee has seen the incident, it&#x27;s not like he hasn&#x27;t seen it.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;And then you&#x27;ve got a very excited man on VAR saying &#x27;delay, delay, delay&#x27; and they ask him and he says he&#x27;s going to have a word with the players.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Then he has to trot over to change his mind. It&#x27;s ridiculous.&quot;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"\/sport\/football\/articles\/cwy81lp4pq4o\">\n<p>Celtic call for VAR review after Trusty appeal fails<\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Published23 hours ago<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/sport\/football\/articles\/cx24kgz91wjo\">\n<p>Old Firm &#x27;buckle under pressure&#x27; as incredible title race twists again<\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Published2 days ago<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>O&#x27;Neill, in Germany for the second leg of their Europa League play-off with Stuttgart, added: &quot;All I&#x27;m saying is that VAR, in time, we won&#x27;t need a referee. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;VAR will do it for them from wherever they&#x27;re doing it from because that&#x27;s what they do.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;They&#x27;ve asked the referee to go over something that he&#x27;s actually seen. He&#x27;s seen it, it&#x27;s not like he&#x27;s missed the incident.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;He&#x27;d said it was nothing, &#x27;I&#x27;m going to have a word with the guys&#x27;. I&#x27;ve now got a player who is going to miss three games.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Asked if he agreed with the notion of VAR officials re-refereeing matches, O&#x27;Neill replied: &quot;Of course they are. It&#x27;s such a nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#x27;s fine if they&#x27;ve missed something dramatic and it constitutes something that they need to have a look at.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;But when a referee sees the incident themself, what he&#x27;s being told is &#x27;no you didn&#x27;t see that incident, you didn&#x27;t see that, you saw something else,&#x27; that&#x27;s got to be debilitating for the referee, it&#x27;s got to be.&quot;<\/p>\n<h2>Related topics<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"\/sport\/football\/scottish-premiership\">Scottish Premiership<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/sport\/football\/teams\/celtic\">Celtic<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/sport\/football\/scottish\">Scottish Football<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/sport\/football\">Football<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>More on this story<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"\/sport\/football\/teams\/celtic\">\n<p>Visit our Celtic page for all the latest news, analysis and fan views<\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/sport\/football\/60697412\">\n<p>Get Celtic news notifications in the BBC Sport app<\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Published18 June 2023<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VAR &#x27;debilitating&#x27; for referees &#8211; Celtic&#x27;s O&#x27;NeillTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.This video can not be playedMedia caption, Trusty sent off for sw&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-decor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}