Madden Apology Meant So Much

[ian1964 10,447]

ANDY HALLIDAY has tonight paid tribute to Bobby Madden after the referee apologised for wrongly red carding him in Rangers’ 4-2 win over Hibernian on December 28.

 

Madden dismissed Halliday for an alleged headbutt on Hibs’ Fraser Fyvie late in the festive fixture, but the decision was later reduced to yellow on appeal with the Scottish FA instead handing Fyvie a two-game ban for simulation.

 

Halliday hasn’t had his troubles to seek with refereeing decisions recently, and he was left doubly frustrated following another highly contentious sending off against Morton a fortnight ago which was the result of a second yellow card for celebrating Barrie McKay’s clinching goal in the 2-0 victory at Cappielow.

 

Madden was back in charge of Rangers for the first time since the Hibs’ clash for Saturday’s Scottish Cup stalemate with Kilmarnock, and Halliday was left delighted after the whistler took the time to admit his error.

 

The midfielder explained exclusively to RangersTV.tv: “Bobby Madden was the referee at the weekend and he was the first one to come up to me after the game to apologise for sending me off against Hibs, which I thought was a great credit to him.

 

“Sometimes you don’t see that, and even a thing as simple as saying ‘sorry’ made me feel a lot better, and it just shows you that referees can make mistakes as well. That’s the case with the sending-off against Morton too which I thought was ridiculous, although obviously I can’t go too much into that.

 

“With the Hibs sending off though, I made a mistake as well. I retaliated in the first place which probably put me in the situation where I could have been shown a red card.

 

“And like I said, I think Bobby deserves a lot of credit for coming and apologising for that. It does take a lot to come and say sorry as sometimes you don’t want to admit that you’ve made a mistake.

 

“But we are all human and we all make mistakes. I think he is a very good referee though and I have a lot of respect for him.”

 

Having been in excellent form for Rangers of late, Halliday’s subsequent dismissal against Morton on January 25 hit him hard, and he admits he will now reassess how he marks both his and his teammates’ goals going forward.

 

He added: “It was a massive disappointment, and it didn’t make it any easier having been sent off a few weeks previously for something I felt was a bit of an injustice.

 

“It’s past now and I’m going to look ahead to the future – but I’ll need to be more careful with my celebrations from now on!”

 

That said, after grabbing the solitary goal in last Tuesday’s 1-0 win at Raith Rovers, Halliday proclaimed his strike by simply shaking hands with his fellow players, although he revealed Martyn Waghorn would have beaten him to the celebration had he scored against Falkirk three days earlier.

 

Halliday continued: “It was some light-hearted banter. It was unfortunate that I had missed the Falkirk game due to a sending-off that I felt was a bit of an injustice, and it was Martyn that had said if he scored a goal against Falkirk then he was going to do the celebration for a joke.

 

“But we carried that on to Tuesday and luckily I was the one that got the goal and managed to do it myself.”

 

http://rangers.co.uk/news/headlines/madden-apology-meant-much/?

[MacK1950 2,249]

Well done for his apology but he is still a prat of a referee but that goes for most if not all in Scotland.

[RANGERRAB 3,299]

Will Fyvie now apologise for his part in getting Halliday sent off?