I think it’s safe to say that referee Craig Thomson hasn’t won a friend in St Johnstone captain Jody Morris.
The Perth midfielder did his best to keep a lid on his frustrations with the man in the middle in the wake of Saints’ defeat to the SPL champions on Saturday. But he didn’t quite pull it off.
He and the rest of the home team were irate that Thomson allowed Gers’ Steve Davis to take a quick first-half free-kick from a good few yards away from where David McCracken was adjudged to have fouled David Healy. Nor was the former Chelsea man best pleased with the referee’s manner.
Morris said: ”When there’s a free-kick you expect it to be taken where the foul was committed. I wasn’t even sure it was a foul but I knew where it was supposed to have happened.
”Obviously we felt aggrieved at where it was taken. It must have been five or six yards away and it allowed them to break on us quickly.
”I’m all for keeping the ball moving quickly but the other team needs to know where it’s going to come from. As soon as you lose the ball you set up to defend from where the foul was. You don’t expect the play to be restarting until it’s back to that place.
”I’m not knocking Steve Davis but you’ve got to expect the referee to make him take it in the proper position.
”He let them take another in the second half which was about 10 yards away.
”We did it ourselves in the first half and got pulled back for it, which was fair enough because it was about 12 yards away. At the end of the day it was poor.”
He added: ”Without going into too much detail I already had the hump with the referee for something he said to me after I was kicked. I won’t go into what he said but I wasn’t too happy about it. So I wasn’t in the best frame of mind with him.
”I said to him ‘Surely you’ve got to take the free kick where the foul was supposedly committed?’ but he just batted it off. He just didn’t want to know about anything we were saying.
”The more he was doing that, the more I was getting annoyed. It’s not good for me to be getting a booking for opening my mouth but there are certain things you expect when you’re playing, and if it results in us losing a goal you’re going to be aggrieved, as well all were.
”I don’t mind a referee speaking to me a certain way if I’m allowed to speak to him a certain way but I wasn’t having what he was saying to me.”
Whatever your take on Thomson’s acceptance of Davis’s free-kick, what can’t be disputed is that it allowed Sone Aluko the opportunity to carry the ball unchallenged into the Saints box after it was swiftly moved on to him. From there he worked himself space for a shot which was redirected past Peter Enckelman by Nikica Jelavic for the opener.
The incident had the double effect of knocking Saints off their stride for the remainder of the first period and the start of the second, as well as raising the temperature both on the pitch and off it.
There were some tasty challenges dished out from the likes of Murray Davidson, and rival managers Ally McCoist and Steve Lomas got involved in a technical area barney.
The match looked to be under Rangers’ control until Saints snatched an equaliser on 67 minutes when a Liam Craig cross was headed goalwards by Marcus Haber, with Carlos Bocanegra getting the decisive touch which left keeper Neil Alexander helpless.
Seconds later David Robertson, who was wasteful with a great aerial chance in the first half, was inches wide with a shot from the edge of the box.
We were into the 82nd minute when Steven Anderson conceded a needless free-kick in midfield. From the free-kick Enckelman brilliantly finger-tipped a header from one of his own men Murray Davidson on to the bar but the ball rebounded to Jelavic and he had a simple tap-in for his second and Rangers’ winner.
For this goal, Morris admitted they had no-one to blame but themselves.
He pointed out: ”We’d got back into the game and it was a bad goal to concede. We should be defending a floaty free-kick like that, whether it’s the keeper coming to catch it or somebody heading it away.”
Fran Sandaza was always going to be the man under closest scrutiny at McDiarmid given Rangers’ public courting of the Spaniard. He didn’t get a sniff of a chance but his link-up play was first class and McCoist, or indeed any other suitors, certainly wouldn’t have been put off by what they saw.