If guesswork is the name of the game, it’s high time we brought in video refs
LONG before he became one of UEFA’s top men, Hugh Dallas offered a stark admission. Scotland’s referees are regarded as a band of brothers. A tightknit fraternity.
But only one man gets to handle Old Firm games and Scottish Cup finals. Which makes officials more than colleagues and friends. They’re also rivals.
This may be why the men in black seem to be competing on a weekly basis to make the biggest cock-up.
Last weekend’s glut of reffing awful decisions prompted a predictable response from the SFA.
Nothing to see here, lads. Move along now.
Hugh Dallas’s son Andrew administered a yellow card to Hearts midfielder Malaury Martin after Motherwell forward Louis Moult had fallen over his own team-mate.
The referee’s punishment? The high-profile Scottish Cup tie between Rangers and Morton at Ibrox.
Fresh from attending a UEFA course for elite referees in Spain, there was no evidence of Craig Thomson being hauled over the coals for wrongly awarding Celtic a penalty at St Johnstone.
The SFA could have responded in any number of ways.
They could have taken their top man out of the frontline. They could have removed him from active duty for a couple of weeks to restore his confidence.
Or they could hand him a fifthround Scottish Cup tie and draw a line under the whole business.
They chose the latter.
ACYNIC might suggest that a game between Dunfermline and Hamilton is all the punishment that any man needs. But Thomson is not doing some form of community service here. He will earn good money for handling a Scottish Cup tie in Fife.
And the SFA? Their message to a disgruntled, short-changed footballing public is clear: ‘We’re in charge, nobody else.’
The basic lack of accountability here is worrying. It sends out the message that the best thing a referee can do to enhance his chances of landing an Old Firm game is to make a horrendous cock-up the week before.
Would dropping an official from the roster actually improve his performance? Probably not.
But when Rob Kiernan or Efe Ambrose make a mistake, they lose their place in the team.
When Willie Collum cocks things up, he is handed an Edinburgh derby in the Scottish Cup. No one disputes that refereeing is a difficult job. Borderline impossible.
Officials don’t have the benefit of countless replays. They get one look at a flashpoint, three seconds max to make up their mind and that’s it.
They can’t possibly see every angle and reach the correct decision instantly. Human frailty dictates that errors will happen.
Nevertheless, last weekend’s incidents solidify a growing suspicion that Scottish referees now rely on guesswork when they are handling games.
When they don’t see flashpoints properly — and in last week’s two cases they clearly didn’t — they make an assumption based on what they think probably happened.
This kind of thing may be human. But it’s not good enough. It sells the game short.
No one expects perfection. But we can demand honesty; the realistic expectation that a referee will only give the decisions he actually sees.
Normal, non-paranoid types don’t actually want officials to get things wrong.
Most concede that referees have professional pride. They don’t try to make mistakes, or vie to have people pointing at them in Tesco. They only want what Thomas Carlyle called ‘a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work’.
Meet them in person, and most are perfectly normal, likeable human beings. One even works for this newspaper.
An hour spent in the company of old hands like Willie Young or Stuart Dougal is no great hardship.
The solution is not to condemn referees. It’s to help them.
Video assistant referees have been tried out at the FIFA Club World Cup. The German Bundesliga has also conducted successful trials and will become the first major league to roll out the scheme next season.
Scottish clubs have never been quick to embrace change. Least of all when it costs shedloads of money.
The video system is imperfect. It breaks up games, needs compliant stadia and might only work at the top level.
Even now, you could lay odds on Scottish fans asking what school the VAR went to.
But SFA refereeing chief John Fleming favours the system — and he does so for one reason. For Fleming, Monday morning calls from angry managers have now become a living embodiment of hell.
Refereeing by guesswork no longer cuts it. The technology is there; let’s find a way to use it.