The ‘Kirkcaldy Collina’, JOHN ROWBOTHAM,

Having officiated in a baker’s dozen of Old Firm derbies – and awarded a penalty in the last five minutes of a Scottish Cup Final – John Rowbotham knows what it is like to be a referee under pressure.

He dished out red cards to Lorenzo Amoruso and Neil Mccann while they were playing for Rangers, Terry Butcher when he was Motherwell boss and Ivano Bonetti, at the time player-manager of Dundee.

Six feet three inches tall, and with his distinctive bald head, the “Kirkcaldy Collina” had no problem with the attention that came his way – from inside and outside the game – for asserting his authority during his years as one of Scotland’s leading men in the middle.

Ye t as he re f l e c t e d on the uniqueness of the 2020-21 campaign, he picked out the lack of focus on referees as an unexpected benefit of a season policed by Covid protocols.

“I think, as ever with our game, there has been no shortage of talking points,” said the 65-year-old Fifer.

“And, inevitably, a good number of them have centred around foul play during games.

“What I have felt, though, is that there seems to have been a shift away from all the noise about this or that referee getting a big decision wrong.

“Instead, the focus seems to have shifted on to the culprit – or alleged culprit – at the centre of the incident.

“So, for example, instead of people saying: ‘Bobby Madden should have sent him off for that’, the debate is: ‘I wonder what punishment the player is going to get for that’.”

The reason for that change in attitude, Rowbotham reckons, could be the number of players being hit with retrospective bans by the SFA.

Rangers striker Alfredo Morelos is a recent example, with the Colombian picking up a three-match suspension after the club admitted they had no defence for his stamp on Hibernian’s Ryan Porteous at Easter Road on January 27.

Albian Ajeti, the Celtic forward, is now facing the possibility of a twogame ban after being charged with diving to win a penalty in his side’s win at Kilmarnock last Tuesday.

Scott Brown has already been cleared of violent conduct by the association’s panel of former referees for an incident in the same game, in which the Hoops captain caught Killie’s Aaron Tshibola with his elbow.

Then on Friday, Rangers striker, Kemar Roofe, was brought to book and could be facing a retrospective ban following a tackle on St Johnstone’s Murray Davidson.

“We are seeing quite a few of these cases being dealt with by the fasttrack system, so fans are getting used to it,” Rowbotham continued.

“Of course, they can only get involved when an incident, or part of an incident, hasn’t been seen fully by the match officials.

“So you are not going to get a match re-refereed, or anything close to that.

“But players – guilty of nasty tackles that might have been missed by refs in the past – do not have the same room to hide.

“They are getting the incidents studied in detail and, if they are guilty, they are dealt with it appropriately. “I think that is a really good thing. “Sadly, fans are not at the games

John Rowbotham in the thick of the action during a match between M