Montgomery: VAR review on Hearts penalty felt like a punch to the face

Hibs manager Nick Montgomery says a decision by the VAR review panel that Hearts penalty in the Edinburgh Derby should not have been awarded was like a “punch in the face”.

Lawrence Shankland scored from the spot at Tynecastle to cancel out an Emiliano Marcondes opener in the game that ended 1-1 on February 28.

But an independent VAR review panel found that the spot-kick should not have been awarded.

The panel also said that Hibs should have had a penalty awarded in a game against St Johnstone that they lost 2-1 last month.

So it was a double blow for the Easter Road club and Montgomery struggled to contain his anger at two decisions that could have made the difference in their top-six aspirations.

Speaking to the media on Friday, he said: “It’s just like another punch in the face, I’ll be honest, because to live through that and have a derby win taken off us, taken off the fans and taken off the boys who put the effort in and deserved to win that game.

“On an incident that everyone knew was wrong on the night, for that to come out and to be said in a report that it was wrong, is unacceptable.

“It’s not only affects me, it affects the players, but people will look at the result at the end of the day and it won’t matter that it was the wrong decision.

“It’s not fair for our fans who pay their money and travel, like they did to Ross County the last time, to have an incident like that happen.

“But what you cannot do, is you can’t change it, they say it evens out over the season but it definitely hasn’t evened out for us, but maybe we’ll get a lot of decisions go our way next season.

“You have think positive that maybe we will get the run of the green next season.”