It was an absolutely fucking wild challenge, watching it again it's almost Neil Simpson-level violent the way he's swung his leg right through the kick and left his foot at that height. Who knows the damage that could have done if McCausland is in even a slightly different position.
It was scandalous then and it's worse seeing it again today. It played a decisive role in altering the outcome: allowing Motherwell to remain at full strength, removing one of our players from the game, and leaving the ultimate match-winner on the pitch when he should have been off. And of course, we know how the next few games after that went.
We should be compiling a list of all these moments that have played a role in turning out season and putting them right at the SPL's and SFA's door: The Casey decision (versus the Sterling, Cifuentes and Lundstram red cards), the handball and offside farce in the New Year Old Firm, the disallowed goals v Celtic, the Dundee pitch farces. That's not exhaustive but cumulatively those were fatal.
The job of the authorities, rule book and officials is to provide a level playing field. It won't be perfect, officials won't be perfect, some decisions will go wrongly against us, sometimes we'll get a wee advantage. But they need to demonstrate they are doing their best. What we have seen this season has been fucking negligence to the point of looking like corruption, and it's not our job to uphold the Corinthian spirit when negligence and incompetence are tilting the scales at decisive moments.
I don't care about fans of other teams sneering on Twitter or propaganda merchants like Michael Stewart or even our own fans saying it's "embarrassing" or "sour grapes" to complain about the way decisions like this have mounted up this season. It was fair enough to talk about "these things even themselves out" in the days when refs and linesmen had to make snap judgements based only on what they saw with their own eyes and the position they saw the incident from. That attitude just doesn't stand up when we have VAR.
The point of VAR is to remove probability and reduce big decisions to "what actually happened here?" The refs are no longer owed the privilege of "och well it's a hard job, he's not got a great view of it." Not when two of them are looking at a TV screen repeating the incident right in front of you (and surely with a rulebook to hand in the VAR room. So no, it's not embarrassing, sour grapes or being a bad loser: it's embarrassing for the authorities to explain why Lundstram, Cifuentes and Sterling were all red carded but Casey was not even given a foul against him.