Marley Watkins' early moment of madness against Aberdeen left Dermot Gallagher dumbfounded as his Pittodrie flashpoint got the Ref Watch treatment. But the former whistler says he WOULDN'T have sent him off.
Watkins was back on his old stomping ground with Kilmarnock, and wasn't the only Dons old boy who left happy after Derek McInnes’ men snatched all three points with a 92nd minute stunner from David Watson - set up by another ex-Dandie in Matty Kennedy. But on another night, it could have been a nightmare start for the visitors.
From kick-off, Watkins followed the ball up the pitch from Aberdeen's centre after Leighton Clarkson sent it all the way back to Kelle Roos. As Watkins ran past centre back Stefan Gartenmann, he appeared to throw his arm into the Dane's head, who went down amid his bemused team-mates asking Matthew McDermid for a red card just seconds into the game.
VAR took a look and decided it wasn't worthy of such an early dismissal Sky Sports reviewed the incident with Gallagher and he explained why no action was taken, but couldn't begin to fathom what Watkins was thinking. He said: "Why would you do this? Why? You're what, three or four seconds into the game? Why would you give the referee a big decision like that to make?
"He's felt really lucky, hasn't he? Because the VAR can only recommend a red card. It's probably a yellow card and you can't recommend that to the referee, so he's actually escaped a yellow card after four or five seconds. With 90 minutes to play, it's unbelievable."
Asked how he would have handled it on the pitch, Gallagher replied: "You'd try to win him over and say, 'You can't play 90 minutes like this. It's impossible because you're going to give me a decision to make which you're
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