Blame for defeat falls on referee’s head

Some days, a referee can melt into the background and any piece of poor judgment can be overtaken by an encounter that throws up so many talking points. Craig Thomson had the misfortune to make one questionable decision at Fir Park on Saturday, that not only proved pivotal in determining the outcome but has tainted his reputation.

The Motherwell players accused Thomson of gambling with the health of David Clarkson. The striker received a facial knock that left him looking as if he had gone ten rounds with Ricky Hatton, but the Uefa-category referee refused to stop play and allowed Heart of Midlothian to launch an eleventh-minute counter-attack that contributed the only goal of a wretched game.

The Motherwell side are, naturally, still riddled with anxiety whenever a teammate goes down. It is less than two months since Phil O’Donnell collapsed and died of a heart attack on the same turf and the sight of Clarkson – O’Donnell’s nephew – lying flat out on the edge of the Hearts goalmouth after a clash with José Goncalves triggered alarm among the rest of the team.

They were distracted enough for Stephen Craigan to wildly slice into his own net, from Eggert Jonsson’s shot. Their anger was reserved for Thomson, who had briefly stopped to check the prone Clarkson and pat him on the back, before trying to catch up with the move. Perhaps, that was why the referee was not close enough to spot the handball offence from Christian Nade, the Hearts striker, before laying the ball off to Jonsson.

Had Thomson just gone with a gut instinct, that Clarkson needed treatment, and halted play before the move even developed, then his judgment would not be on trial. The second he ignored it, the referee was in trouble. Any doubts that the Motherwell striker was simply making a meal of the incident were removed when Clarkson was substituted after half an hour.

“David’s left eye looks like a boxer,” Paul Quinn, the captain, said. “For the referee to think that is fine is beyond me. I don’t know how the referee can say he’s not seriously injured. It was a poor decision. The effect of something like a head knock can take 30 seconds to kick in. It is a big responsibility but it is not a hard decision to make – if it is a head knock, then you stop the game.

“I think the referee should have stopped the game. Whether Hearts got a goal is not the issue. They might have scored two minutes later. You simply have to stop for head knocks. Things have happened here recently and we get a bit anxious. I asked the referee afterwards why he didn’t stop play and he said it was because there was no serious injury but David’s gone down and he had to come off pretty soon after that.” Stevie Frail, the Hearts coach, insisted he was unaware there had been any debate surrounding his side’s winner. “I didn’t realise that the lad was down and the ball went back to front pretty quickly,” Frail said. “The referee didn’t want to stop the game so we carried on playing.”

Frail’s counterpart, Mark McGhee, was involved in a furious row with Thomson from the touchline but refused to condemn the referee for not halting the match to deal with Clarkson. “The referee can stop the game if he wants,” the Motherwell manager said. “He told me he didn’t need to stop the game and that’s fine. I still think there was a handball by Nade when the ball got played forward to him but, all of that said, on balance I think we deserved to get beaten.

“It was a game that required a real physical effort and the conditions were as much of a challenge to us as Hearts were. However, regardless of how the goal came about, they just pipped us, not by much, but they still deserved it. They were first to most second balls and just a little bit more stronger.”

That was an accurate assessment from McGhee about an occasion that served, perhaps, the worst excuse for entertainment in a long, long time. The game was ruined by a capricious wind that was behind Hearts in the first half, and visibly helped the visitors, while McGhee’s side could barely get the ball out of their own half.

At one stage, Steve Banks, the Hearts goalkeeper, required Christophe Berra to get down like an old-time rugby union man and hold the ball still with his finger while Banks tried to take a free kick. In the second half, the wind had turned around so much that Banks actually found his spare pair of gloves flying past his right ear as he took a goalkick.

It all made for a truly dreadful game. If this had been the Champions League, and we’d been given pages of pointless statistics, there would almost certainly have been a new European record for the ball going out of play, wind-assisted and otherwise.

There was another mitigating factor: the infamous Fir Park pitch. Motherwell are supposed to have spent £50,000 on it to repair the problem areas after the recent bad weather saw four games postponed there. It does not look like money well spent. McGhee has changed the style of Motherwell’s play to cope with the ragged surface, ditching a passing game for the more direct route: on Saturday, you could not play the ball on the deck, nor in the turbulent air.

Motherwell were going for their tenth win in 14 games, but even when Ross McCormack conjured up a few dipping free kicks in the second half – one glanced on by Craigan – Banks was equal to everything the hosts threw at him. McGhee’s side still retain third place in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League and Quinn is convinced that the contest to qualify for the Uefa Cup next season will not simply be between his team and Dundee United.

“It could well go to the last day,” the captain said. “We realise it is not a two-horse race and that it could open up. United have a chance and so have we, but there will be other sides like Aberdeen, Hibernian and maybe Hearts. We’re not thinking about getting into Europe yet. We’ll target the top six and anything above that is a bonus.” Hearts have won four of their last five matches, with the only blemish on that record being the 3-0 defeat at Celtic Park nine days ago. Frail will only believe that an upturn of fortune has truly arrived if Hearts can copy their defeat of Rangers from September when the leaders return to Tynecastle on Wednesday.

Whether Frail will have Andrius Velicka available is doubtful. The Hearts top scorer was ruled out of the Motherwell game with a pelvic injury but appears to be on the verge of a £1 million transfer to Viking Stavanger, of Norway, so he is unlikely to be risked against a team that he has scored against in their last two meetings.

How they rated

Motherwell (4-4-2): G Smith 6 P Quinn 6 S Craigan 5 M Reynolds 5 S Hammell 4 D Clarkson 4 K Lasley 5 S Hughes 3 M Fitzpatrick 8 C Porter 4 R McCormack 5 Substitutes S Lappin 5 (for Clarkson, 30min), D Smith 7 (for Hughes, 55), Craigan (for J Murphy, 83) Not used L Daniels, B McLean, D Murphy, M Archdeacon.

Hearts (4-4-2): S Banks 8 R Neilson 6 C Karipidis 5 C Berra 7 J Goncalves 5 D Cesnauskis 5 E Jonsson 5 R Palzuelos 6 L Wallace 4 C Nade 4 C Elliot 4 Substitutes S Mikoliunas (for Cesnauskis, 72min), R Beniusis (for Nade, 83), M Zaliukas (for Elliot, 89) Not used A Basso, J Thomson, K Ivaskevicius, A Ksanavicius.

Taken from timesonline.co.uk