Defence of Scotland’s men in the middle
“It’s just human error, and players do the same. If you watch me on a Saturday, I’m pretty sure I’m giving the ball away plenty times.
“Likewise, refs are not going to get every decision right. If they came out and caned us for every decision we got wrong in the game, we’d be in trouble.
“The refs are just unfortunate that they’ve got 22 people – plus the managers – going for them if they make a bad decision.
“You just need to deal with it. They are not full-time like down south – and I’m pretty sure they still make bad decisions.
“So I like most of them. They are all good guys. There are one or two you don’t particularly like, because they don’t really speak to you like a professional, but the majority are spot on.
“The ones that speak to you, those are the ones you like. Andrew Dallas, Willie Collum, Bobby Madden and John Beaton. “These guys might make bad decisions, but they will speak to you and say: ‘Listen, I watched it back, I got it wrong, I’m sorry’.
“It’s the ones that don’t talk to you, and whose attitude is: ‘Get out my face’. See all that stuff? I know it shouldn’t annoy you but it does. It gets your back up and makes you think: ‘Right, I don’t like this guy’.”
At 33, Mackinnon says he is much less likely to act on that impulse than he used to be.
“I think my approach to refs has changed over the years,” he said. “When I first came in, I was constantly on at them all the time and then I realised I was getting booked far too often and it was down to the shouting.
“I know if I was a referee and there was someone right in my face, I’d be thinking: ‘First chance, he’s getting booked’. It’s only human nature.
“So although I still get the odd yellow and red card here and there, I’ve curbed a lot of that behaviour.
“You still want to be aggressive and set the tone, but you don’t want to get those stupid red cards that I used to get. “Even picking up yellow cards for dissent wasn’t setting a good example. “I coach the kids on a Sunday, and I can’t tell them not to shout at referees if they’ve seen me doing it on a Saturday. So you need to curb your temper.”