Celtic, Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Steven McLean will meet again at Hampden Park tomorrow.
It’s over eight years since refereeing drama marred our Scottish Cup semi-final defeat to the Highlanders.
Ronny Deila‘s Hoops were leading 1-0 when Caley defender Josh Meekings handled the ball on his goal-line, preventing a certain Leigh Griffiths goal.
Not only did the Englishman escape a red card, but Celtic weren’t even awarded a penalty.
When the Guardian match report headline begins with ‘focus on referee’ it’s clear all is not well.
It was a remarkable mishap from both referee McLean and goal-line assistant Alan Muir — and Celtic soon paid the price.
All of these years later and McLean has another big role to play in a Celtic vs Inverness Hampden clash.
This time he is not the referee. He is, ironically, in charge of VAR — something that would surely have come to our aid in 2015.
That’s the key difference this time.
John Beaton is the main man tomorrow, but McLean may well be required at some stage.
The eight years since our Caley mishap have been extremely fruitful in terms of trophies.
Victory tomorrow will secure our eighth domestic treble, a world-record. Back in 2015, we only had three to our name.
Celtic are a lot more solid at Hampden these days. Let’s hope we see evidence of that tomorrow.
In other news, there is reported interest in Celtic’s James McCarthy
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