Former whistler Steve Conroy has claimed Reo Hatate should be retrospectively punished for a dive at Tynecastle in the quarter-final of the Scottish Cup and should sit in the stands for the semi-final against The Rangers in April.
Conroy is sick of seeing diving players in the SPFL and believes the SFA should get tough and bring these incidents to light if VAR doesn’t punish them at the time.
As cited by Football Scotland, Conroy said:“We have advocated for some time that there should be a retrospective red card issued – and therefore a two-match suspension – for what was blatant cheating,” he said.
“The anomaly is that VAR can’t get involved because diving is not an ordering-off offence.
“Reo Hatate has been a terrific player in Scottish football but that was bad.
“It’s a blight and it’s horrible to see and I don’t know why retrospective action is not being taken by the SFA for these offences – they seem to have stopped doing it.”
Believe it or not, Steven Conroy is a self-admitted Celtic fan. Why he would openly advocate for one of Celtic’s best players to miss a massive game in the season is beyond us.
Reo did go down without being impeded, and diving should be looked at in general. Making an example of a Celtic player first would be very on point for the SFA. Fashion Sakala also attempted to win a penalty for his team on Sunday by taking a dive inside the Raith Rovers box, but that seems to have flown under the radar.
From where we see it, Conroy is getting paid to turn up at an event and make some noise, and the best way to do that is to make an outlandish claim in the wake of the Scottish Cup draw.
He should maybe call out the more ridiculous decisions that keep going against Celtic.
The Glasgow pair will battle at Hampden for the second time this season. The bhoys won the League Cup by beating the Ibrox club. Michael Beale’s side will be looking for retribution, but so will Celtic, as they were knocked out at this point.
