The VAR audio from Shim Mheuka’s disallowed goal against St Mirren has done little to clear up the decision.
The goal was given on the pitch before VAR Don Robertson began checking for offside.
During the review on Sky Sports, Robertson can be heard admitting: “We can’t put a line on the defender.”
That should already tell you how unusual the situation was.
Rather than having a calibrated line which could establish the offside position, the officials had to work through different camera angles before referee Ryan Lee was sent to the monitor to make his own call.
At one stage, Robertson says: “Okay, but it’ll be offside. I think it’ll be offside.”
Lee then looks at the available pictures and says: “So that looks like he’s offside from that.
“Although you can’t draw lines, that looks like it’s offside.”
The goal was then disallowed.
Speaking during the VAR Review programme, Collum insisted there had been no malfunction with the technology.
He said: “They never malfunctioned. You know, you can still draw lines here, but if you attempt to draw lines on [unclear], you’ll be guessing.
“And what we said in the first clip, we don’t guess.”
That is likely to stand out to Celtic supporters after hearing the audio from the incident itself.
The VAR says “I think it’ll be offside”, while Lee says the player “looks like” he is offside before the original on-field decision is overturned.
Collum went on to explain why the referee was sent to the monitor.
“But here, in their opinion, the Celtic player is offside,” he said.
“So the referee is brought to the monitor, and it’s then up to him to make that decision, because it doesn’t become a factual overturn, because we don’t have the lines there to put them down and say this is factually offside.
“So we leave it to the on-field match official to come and assess that.”
Collum openly accepts that the decision could not be treated as a factual offside overturn because the lines were not there to establish it.
Instead, the final call came down to Ryan Lee looking at the footage and deciding Mheuka appeared to be in an offside position.
Collum insists: “So we’re not guessing this decision here in this particular situation.”
The problem is that the audio does not make the process sound anywhere near as clear-cut as supporters have come to expect from an offside decision.
The goal was given on the pitch. VAR could not place the defensive line. Robertson believed Mheuka was offside from the available footage, and Lee then overturned the goal because it “looks like” the Celtic player was beyond the defender.
For a system which is supposed to remove doubt from factual offside calls, that is a difficult outcome to sell as anything other than highly subjective.
Celtic had already seen Camilo Duran denied by another tight offside decision in the same match.
There was no calibrated line available to establish the offside position, and Collum himself confirmed it did not become a factual overturn.
That will only add to the frustration around a goal Celtic had initially been awarded before VAR stepped in.
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