RETIRED referee Steve Conroy has admitted he had to keep his love for Celtic a secret in order to avoid getting "battered".

Conroy refereed under the guise of being a Dumbarton fan despite having no affiliation with the club.

Speaking on the Get Involved Referee podcast, he said: "If you are a St Mirren or Aberdeen fan, you are perfectly at liberty to come out and say that. But you can't come out and say you are a Celtic or Rangers supporter, because you are just going to get battered.

"I used to always pretend that I was a Dumbarton supporter. No affiliation to Dumbarton whatsoever, I just used to pretend.

“Down south if you have an affiliation with a team, you don’t ref them.

“Up here we all get into the game to be a ref in top games and being from the west of Scotland, more often than not, you support Celtic or Rangers.

"So if you have an allegiance to one or the other, and you are not allowed to ref them, who is going to be reffing the games?

"You don't declare an allegiance, but somehow the SFA know. You know that they know because you get allocated an awful lot of pre-match friendlies involving the team that you supported.”

The retired whistler has made no secret of his allegiances post retirement and admits that refereeing his only Old Firm game in 2010 was the experience of a lifetime.

He added: “It was just an absolutely amazing feeling.

“Even though you are mic'd up for the game, it was so noisy. You couldn't hear a thing over the communication kit.

"The buzz in your ears for days after it because of the noise... it was fantastic."

His hidden bias certainly didn’t have an impact on his game as he controversially chose to only caution Rangers forward Kyle Lafferty following a dangerous challenge on Hoops’ defender Andreas Hinkel.

And upon reflection Conroy admits he got the decision wrong.

He said: “There were a couple of incidents and I’ll admit I got one wrong. I should have sent off Kyle Lafferty but I cautioned him.

“It was a straight leg challenge on Andreas Hinkel and it should have been a straight red.

“When you see it on TV, I was in the wrong angle. I was too far up the pitch at that point and I shouldn't have been there and I probably would never have been in that position in any other game in my life.

“If I had been in my normal position and I had a side-on view I would have sent him off.

“The annoyance for me is that there were two other officials who had that side-on view and I didn’t get helped out.”

That wasn’t the only controversial moment in the match as Conroy disallowed a goal from Celtic’s Marc-Antoine Fortune for a foul on Gers keeper Allan McGregor.

But the Hoops fan remains adamant that he got that decision correct.

He continued: “I have watched it hundreds of times and I’m perfectly happy with the decision.

“He didn’t break his arms, but he knocked his arms. If somebody knocks your arms when you are a goalie, you can't catch the ball.

“When I was summoned to the SFA for the debrief I was told by the referee’s supervisor that my decision was “a matter of opinion” and they were going with the opinion of the match observer who had a different opinion.”

That would be Conroy’s only Old Firm game before his retirement in 2012 after the SFA failed to back him for awarding Rangers a controversial penalty kick against Dunfermline in 2011.