Accies skipper leaps to the defence of Scotland’s men in the middle
Five-times red-carded in a stormy career, Darian MacKinnon makes for an unlikely cheerleader for Scottish referees.
Yet as the clamour for reform – be it either the appointment of full-time officials or the introduction of VAR – grows ever louder, Hamilton’s shavenheaded skipper positions himself firmly in the corner of the men in black.
“I can understand why they want to introduce VAR, especially at the highest level where there’s so much money involved. But I quite like all the controversy,” he said.
“You want all that mad stuff, folk saying: ‘They’ve cost us the game’ and all that. Obviously you don’t want referees getting slaughtered every week, but these incidents make the game what it is.
“You see Rangers getting a goal that should have been given offside at Hearts, and then they didn’t get one at Dundee that they should have. If we didn’t have these incidents, people would have nothing to talk about.”
Accies are at Rangers this afternoon, a club that has arguably had more issues with officials this season than any other.
The Light Blues lodged an official protest against Willie Collum and have an SFA hearing next week, at which they will have to answer to five charges brought against them by the ruling body.
MacKinnon won’t comment on the complaints, but is happy to give his general impressions on the standard of officiating.
“I think some of the decisions are bad, but that overall referees do a good job,” he continued.
“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.”