Bobby Madden wades into Rangers 'handball' row as Celtic non penalty examined in 'secret' SFA jibe

Bobby Madden took a barbed dig at the SFA for the confusion around new handball guidance – and also had a swipe over Kyogo's non-penalty against Kilmarnock.

The Premiership wouldn't really be back without some ref and VAR drama and we were just 30 minutes into the new season before our first real controversy of the season. That came in Hearts' clash with Rangers when Yan Dhanda's cross appeared to strike the arm of Connor Barron, but nothing was given by ref Nick Walsh or VAR.

There was some consistency on show in Sunday's Dundee derby when Dundee's Luke Graham similarly appeared to handle the ball in the box but nothing was forthcoming. Both would likely have been penalties last season, but it has emerged that SFA head of refereeing Willie Collum has instructed officials to be more lenient where handball rules are concerned this term after guidance from UEFA.

Now though the confusion appears to have rubbed former Grade 1 ref Madden up the wrong way. He shared clips of both incidents on his Instagram stories. And captioning footage from the Dundee derby, where United initially felt hard done by, Madden wrote: "UEFA have finally seen sense and 'relaxed' the handball criteria. SFA have to follow suit and apply new criteria. Unfortunately that appears to be secret and we will have to wait for their transparent press release this week to find out if this is a penalty or not."

Later on Sunday, Celtic thumped Kilmarnock 4-0 to kick off their title defence in style, but that wasn't without its officiating drama either. Kyogo felt he'd been impeded by keeper Robby McCrorie late on, but nothing was given by ref Don Robertson or VAR. That left pundit Chris Sutton raging at the 'ridiculous' decision, and despite an initial