ALLOA captain Andy Graham last night defended the part-time League 1 side’s approach to their Scottish Cup fourth round match against Celtic and denied they had set out to deliberately hurt their opponents.

Parkhead striker Giorgio Giakoumakis claimed the home team’s play at the Indodrill Stadium on Saturday night had been “dangerous” and had “crossed the line” after seeing Callum McGregor, Liel Abada and Yosuke Ideguchi pick up injuries. 

Graham conceded the Mouhamed Niang foul on Ideguchi in the second-half of an encounter which the visitors won by a narrow 2-1 scoreline had been “reckless” – but insisted it only merited a yellow card from referee Don Robertson.

The 38-year-old defender also stated that McGregor, who looks set to spend several weeks on the sidelines after suffering a head knock in the first-half, and Abada had to leave the field because of “innocuous” and “accidental” challenges. 

“In this day and age you can’t go out and kick players any more,” he said. “When I started out on my career a long time ago you were always allowed one dodgy tackle before your name went in the referee’s book.

“But nowadays you get yellow carded for pretty much any bad challenge and sent off if it’s over the score. And that’s the way it should be because footballers, especially flair players and quality players, need to be protected.

“Callum’s injury was the result of a totally innocuous clash of heads. It could have been our player who came off worse there. It wasn’t an elbow, there wasn’t anything malicious in it at all. It was completely accidental from Kingy (Adam King).

“He is a bit gutted that Callum has ended up with a sore one. We obviously wish him well in his recovery. But it was definitely accidental.

“As was the one for Abada. I watched it back afterwards and there was nothing in that one. The two players went to kick the ball at the same time. I would imagine Abada suffered a bruised foot and that happens in most games. It is not a serious injury.”

Graham continued: “The one that is contentious is when Sena (Niang) goes in on Ideguchi and catches him with the follow through. When you slow down a replay of the tackle, it does look bad. But a lot of tackles are like that.

“You need to take it for what it is. I don’t think Sena intentionally went in to hurt the player, he went in to win the ball and look after himself almost, to make sure he didn’t get hurt. That was my take on it.

“As a fellow professional, the last thing you want to do is injure somebody who is doing the same job as you. The intent to do that would never be there from any of our players. I would never allow that as captain of the team. It is unacceptable.

“If it happened to one of our boys they would, because we are part-time, have to take a long time off work. That is the flip side of it. There is no way that was a tactic.

“Don’t get me wrong, we were wanting to be close to the Celtic players. If we hadn’t been close to them they would have torn us apart. They have so much quality that if you aren’t aggressive in your press they will pick you off and score a lot of goals.

“I have read a lot of the comments and I think it is unfortunate because it wasn’t the intent of the Alloa players at all.”

Graham revealed that he had talked to Celtic striker Giakoumakis, who opened the scoring on his first start since recovering from minor knee surgery, during the game and had dismissed his complaints about Alloa’s challenges.

“I actually spoke to him about it on the pitch after Abada got his injury,” he said. “I told him that I didn’t think there was anything in it. Having looked back at it, there isn’t anything in it at all. The two players go to kick the ball at the same time. I think Abada has maybe hit the bottom of Sena’s foot.

“The Ideguchi one? Nowadays you need to be careful with the follow through as a midfielder. But Sena is not the type of character who wants to go out and hurt someone. It is not in his nature at all.

“If you slow it down and look at how he has caught his ankle on the follow through, you could say it is a little bit reckless, but there was no intent. A yellow card was probably the right decision.

“I understand that Celtic are frustrated they have got these injuries with the busy period they have got coming up. The last thing they wanted was for their captain to get injured. But that was the most innocuous challenge of them all. It was a complete accident. The criticism there has been does detract a little bit from the effort the boys put in.”