Frank McAvennie has made his position on VAR abundantly clear in the wake of Auston Trusty’s red card during Celtic’s defeat to Hibernian.
Trusty’s appeal to the SFA was unsuccessful, meaning the American defender must serve a three-match ban that rules him out of fixtures against Rangers, Aberdeen and Motherwell. McAvennie, speaking on Let Me Be Frank, had a simple message for the governing body: scrap VAR entirely. He described the use of video technology in the Scottish game as an embarrassment, pointing to a weekend of decisions that he felt were indefensible and impossible to justify even on a basic level.
On Trusty’s sending off specifically, McAvennie was dismissive of the reasoning behind it. He argued that brushing away an arm does not constitute aggressive conduct and was unimpressed by any attempt to frame it otherwise. He also referenced the Liam Scales penalty claim in the same match, which VAR chose not to pursue, and drew a comparison with a separate incident involving Rangers, suggesting that if a challenge is not a penalty then it should at minimum be a free kick, with the possibility of a sending off to follow. He acknowledged the reluctance to see players dismissed in the final minutes of a game but made clear that consistency has to take priority.
Former SFA referee John Rowbotham offered some context around why corners are so difficult to police, telling McAvennie that with 15 or 16 players packed into the box, the pulling, blocking and holding that goes on makes it extremely challenging for any official to make clear judgments in real time.
That may explain some of the difficulty, but the broader concern remains. Until the fundamental application of VAR is brought under proper control in Scottish football, controversies of this kind are unlikely to go away.