David Marshall is nearing the end of his playing days, and might be starting to think about his onward job options.
For a short while last night, he may have been pondering how quickly he could train as an electrician and disrupt the power supply to Pittodrie’s VAR system.
In the defining moment of Marshall’s career, he will have felt like he waited seven minutes to discover whether he would be officially credited with a pivotal penalty save. Here, in a less memorable chapter, he literally did.
The world seemed to be against the goalkeeper in that period, with a pair of marginal calls which would have gone his way a few weeks ago. Whilst there was little doubt about the second, Marshall departing his line noticeably earlier than in Belgrade, he was arguably unfortunate in the first place to concede a penalty which Duk was clearly hoping to obtain.
The referee having decided in real time that contact was either absent or inconsequential, the evidence of VAR did not look to be clearly and obviously contrary. That referees appear to be shown such brief snippets of the point of action, taken out of context of the phase of play, has the potential to mislead them – such as the strange situation last week where Dundee United‘s Tony Watt was shown a delayed red card on the ref’s viewing of a replay, then reprieved on the appeal tribunal watching an expanded version of the same clip.
If this penalty was contentious though, Aberdeen need make no apology to Hibs for its catalysing impact on the match.
Jim Goodwin was not on the touchline when David Munro trotted over to check the screen but he will have been looking down upon it all from his temporarily lofty perch with a wry grin.
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