LEIGH GRIFFITHS has denied he dived in an attempt to win a penalty in Celtic’s 4-2 victory over St Johnstone. The striker, who scored his team’s first goal, was shown a yellow card by referee Craig Thomson late in the first half after going down in the box with defender Richard Foster in close proximity. Thomson felt Griffiths had made the most of the situation and booked him, with the forward desperately protesting his innocence.
“There was contact in the box,” he said. “I’m not going to go down unless there was contact. "I said that to the ref that he’s refereed other games against me and he’s not seen me dive once. I said that to him and he said, “well I thought you dived, that’s why you got booked”. But I’ll take it on the chin I scored a goal and we got three points.”
His manager Brendan Rodgers admitted he had not seen the incident again but felt that the player was not the type to try to cheat a referee.
“I spoke to Leigh on it and he felt he had contact,” said Rodgers. “I will need to see it again on the replay. I thought the referee was excellent today and made good decisions. Leigh felt there was contact and he goes down. I haven’t seen anything in training to show that he’s like a lot of players who like to simulate to provoke the ref into giving a penalty. But he’s got a booking so we have to accept it.”
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