Kasper Høgh finally had the ball in the net for Celtic against Kilmarnock.

For around half a minute, it looked as though the Dane’s long wait was over.

Then VAR became involved.

See the full Celtic v Rangers head-to-head record on our derby page.

Høgh finished a good Celtic move in the first half, only for referee John Beaton to be sent to the monitor over Mika Baur’s earlier challenge on Greg Kiltie.

Beaton had allowed play to continue and awarded the goal. After reviewing the incident, he changed his decision and gave Kilmarnock a free-kick.

It looked an extremely soft intervention.

Baur challenged Kiltie before Celtic regained possession and eventually worked the ball into Høgh, who finished from close range.

The issue is not that VAR was allowed to check the incident.

The VAR protocol allows an attacking offence in the build-up to a goal to be reviewed. However, the original decision is only supposed to be changed when there has been a “clear and obvious error” or “serious missed incident”.

That is where Sunday’s decision becomes particularly difficult to understand.

There was enough contact between Baur and Kiltie for people to debate whether a foul could have been given.

But that is very different from Beaton making an obvious mistake by allowing play to continue.

And the frustration only grows when you look at what happened in Paisley less than 24 hours earlier.

Referee Nick Walsh immediately pointed to the spot.

Replays showed very little contact, with St Mirren themselves describing it as minimal, while James McFadden called the award “softer than soft”. VAR checked the incident but Walsh’s original decision was allowed to stand.

That is where questions over consistency become impossible to ignore.

On Saturday, a very soft penalty decision was allowed to remain because VAR did not consider the referee’s original call wrong enough to overturn.

On Sunday, Beaton’s decision to allow Baur’s challenge and award Celtic the goal was treated differently.

VAR decided the incident was strong enough to send Beaton to the monitor and ultimately wipe out Høgh’s finish.

Those two outcomes sit uncomfortably beside each other.

If the Penrice incident was not clearly and obviously wrong enough for VAR to intervene, it is difficult to understand why the contact involving Baur and Kiltie met that threshold.

That does not mean every soft penalty must automatically lead to every other soft decision going the same way.

Football will always contain subjective calls.

The concern is how high the bar for VAR intervention actually is.

The system was not introduced to re-referee every piece of marginal contact.

Its purpose is to correct clear mistakes in match-changing situations.

Høgh’s disallowed goal makes that particularly relevant.

The striker went into the game without scoring in his previous 15 Celtic appearances and thought he had finally ended that run.

He celebrated in front of the Celtic support before VAR intervened and his wait continued.

Høgh then had another excellent opportunity shortly afterwards but was denied by Nico Mantl.

Martin O’Neill did not attack the officials afterwards because he had not properly seen the incident back.

He said: (TCW), “I have genuinely not seen it back because the little screen that we have is too small for me to see it, the wee one that we have down in the touchline.

“So the minute they’ve not given it, I can only go by what the lads were saying. They thought it was touch and go.

“I genuinely have not seen it back.”

“Touch and go” gets to the heart of the problem.

Celtic ultimately won 1-0 through Liam Scales’ first-half goal, so the decision did not cost O’Neill’s side points.

That should not stop it being questioned.

The contrast with the Penrice penalty from the previous evening only adds to the frustration.

One marginal decision was left with the referee on the pitch.

Less than a day later, another was considered serious enough for VAR to intervene and change the outcome.

Supporters can accept that referees will sometimes view incidents differently.

What becomes much harder to accept is not knowing when VAR believes a subjective decision has crossed the line from debatable to clearly wrong.

Opening the team picker…