Referee Alan Freeland ruined the show with an erratic and IMO incompetent display which saw him send off four players without a bad tackle to speak of in the entire 90 minutes and the attending crowd only got to see ONE of those FOUR red cards clearly.
It turned out to be a day of guessing what the man in the middle was doing and to be honest I'm very surprised that the home crowd didn't burst into a rendition of....
"You don't know what your doing, You don't know what your doing"
but we were treated to a rendition or two of ....
"Who's the Barsteward in the black, Whoooo's the Barrrrsteward in the black"
and on this display IMHO freeland earned the accolades that were thrown at him by the home support (if the cap fits and all that)
The game erupted, and not for the first time, after 24 minutes when Scott Brown shielded possession on the wing in front of the West Stand and Stephen O'Donnell came off worse and ended up cuddling the advertising boards, but Browns part was deemed to be an offence by the incompetent freeland and Brown was subsequently shown a yellow, one of TEN cards handed out in what was a tough, but never a dirty game
During the fracas, in front of the West Stand, that followed, Falkirk sub Liam Craig got himself involved with the Hibs fans and he was sent to the stands though no indication from the ref to the crowd as to what was going on and we were left to guess at what had actually happened with some fans round me saying that Craig had been sent off and some saying he was just sent off to get blood on his face removed, confused yet? Well we the paying fans were and unbelievably it was to get worse.
Two yellow cards for Kevin Thomson resulted in him departing before half-time, the first for protesting about the lecture given to Brown after Brown was scythed down, and there was me thinking it was the captains job to ask why it was the victim and not the offender who saw the refs wrath.
To be fair, Falkirk deserved their win if only for the fact that they remained more composed as the referee infuriated both sets of players and their fans, especially the Hibees contingent.
Falkirk lost another player when O'Donnell received a second yellow card midway through the second half, but only after a Hibs fan had alerted Hibs assistant manager, Mark Venus, who then alerted the fourth official who had to point out to the referee that he'd already booked the midfielder and that no matter how hard freeland wanted to hurt Hibs the Falkirk player had to walk all the way to an early bath.
Hibs continued to push forward in numbers leaving Scott Brown at the back as a sweeper and Abdessalam Benjelloun was only inches away with his first touch after coming off the bench.
After the final whistle the incompetent ref was roundly Booed off the park by an irate Hibs support but the ref had the last laugh as Scott Brown received his second yellow card in the tunnel after the whistle for rightly criticising the referee and his inapt performance on the park.
To top it all, up in the stands our very own John Park had a few choice words with the official supervisor, who attends games to file reports on the performance of the match officials, and unbelievably the supervisor had marked down the match officials performance as satisfactory !!!! So in essence, the supervisor, unlike the 14,828 paying fans thought nothing of freelands general inapt display in black and the FACT he forgot to send a player off after issuing two yellow cards is Satisfactory.
To say I was irate is an understatement and the fact it was the referee who raised my blood pressure, as opposed to our opponents on the day, is a very sad state of affairs and I'll bet that no action at all will be taken by the beeks and this kind of incompetent display will just be swept under the carpet and filed away in the record books.