Paddy Power troll Rangers penalty call as Celtic handed day one incentive | OneFootball

Bookmakers Paddy Power have brutally trolled Nick Walsh and the refereeing team’s decision not to award Hearts a penalty today. The teams met at Tynecastle but there was a flashpoint in the first half of the 0-0 opening day draw, when Dhanda’s cross hit Conor Barron’s hand in the box.

Barron looked sheepish but there was no VAR intervention. Supporters were rightly perplexed by the call but Paddy Power channeled that in a tweet.

The decision reflects a policy change for referees and VAR under the watch of Head of Refereeing Willie Collum. Collum wants less intervention from officials and clearly wants to stop re-refereeing games. Hopefully, this is the case and it’ll be applied across all matches for all teams.

Celtic, meanwhile can seize the title initiative from day one by recording a win against Kilmarnock tomorrow afternoon. While it is the earliest of stages, it is good to open up a gap on our nearest challengers from last season as there are likely to be a number of twists and turns over the course of the season.

Despite Rangers dropping points, Celtic need to strengthen and not dwell too much on what is happening over in Govan.