Anthony Ralston insists the delight in Celtic’s Premier Sports Cup final triumph over Rangers has not been dampened by the non-penalty furore which has dominated the aftermath.
Scottish Football Association’s head of referees Willie Collum confirmed on Thursday that the Ibrox club were denied a spot-kick at Hampden Park on Sunday by a “really poor decision” by the VAR team which he deemed “unacceptable”.
With the Old Firm clash tied at 3-3 in extra time, referee John Beaton blew for a foul just outside the Hoops’ box when Celtic defender Liam Scales fouled winger Vaclav Cerny.
However, television replays showed the infringement was inside the penalty area and after the free-kick came to nothing, Celtic went on to win 5-4 on penalties after a draw in 120 minutes.
Rangers boss Philippe Clement described the absence of intervention by VAR Alan Muir and assistant VAR Frank Connor over the penalty incident as “really weird”.
Ralston said: “I don’t feel it has put any sort of dampener on our success. We’re all buzzing, we’re all extremely happy with the outcome of the game.
“We got our hands on the trophy, and that’s all we really care about to be honest, everything else is not something that we’re going to overly pay attention to. It’s not obviously our place to do that.
“From my point of view, I didn’t really look too much into it after the game.
“There was an on-field decision made at the time, which isn’t down to us to make as players.
“There wasn’t much said about it until after the game, when ultimately we’d won.
“So it’s part and parcel of football. And, I can speak on behalf of the other lads, we don’t take much to do with it, to be honest,
“Let the officials do that side of it. And the important thing for us is we had a job to do, which was win the trophy, which we’re all delighted that we’ve managed to do.”
Scotland defender Ralston, who came through the youth ranks at Celtic, was not surprised by the extent of the fall-out from a controversial decision in a match between the Glasgow giants.
The right-back said: “Not overly, it’s the football world, there’s going to be opinion, there’s going to be different views on things.
“But as players, we’re just solely focused on the football and getting the job done, which I’ve said, we’re delighted that we’ve done and it’s not something that we’re going to dwell on to be honest.”
Celtic moved ahead in the silverware race with Rangers, with the weekend cup win taking them on to 119 trophies – one more than their Old Firm rivals.
Ralston said: “It’s an important point in our history and as a club and we’re delighted to be able to deliver that to the fans all around the world, everyone that tuned in, everyone that was at the game, everybody connected.
“It’s a special thing. It’s another marker for us as a group of players and we want to keep delivering success, and that’s what drives us every day to do that.”
