Everyone loves to hate referees but they are essential to have a match to go along to at the weekends or whatever other time is convenient for the TV companies.
At times during the games, they are useless, they are cheats they are massive fans of whoever the opposition happens to be, they are intentionally trying to give decisions against your team and in favour of the other team – according to fans of all clubs.
Do we, as fans, have our green tinted spectacles on when analysing a referees performance? We more than likely do but my problem is the overall standard of refereeing in Scotland.
I am sure any fan could highlight bad decisions regardless of what team they support and what country they watch their football in but that’s not the point, the point is that the performance of most referees in Scotland are simply not good enough and must improve.
For me, one of the worst culprits is Iain Brines, last season up at Perth with the Michael Duberry incident (for those who don’t remember, Duberry handled the ball in full view of the ref while the ball was in play and Celtic were not awarded a penalty. Brines allowed the match to continue). How can the referee not have noticed that?
Even if there was a reason for him not seeing it, would it be a reasonable explanation? It doesn’t really matter because the general consensus seems to be that we don’t have many referees so we’d better not criticise the existing ones as we don’t want to upset them.
To my knowledge, the referees do not have any sort of punishment for bad decisions or rewards for good performances and they do not have to explain their decisions, certainly not in public anyway.
The official line is that referees cannot come out and publicly talk about games but we do hear from them now and again. Referees in the past have expressed a desire to be able to explain decisions so why not allow them to?
Obviously this would have to be controlled as it could quickly just turn into an angry mob of defeated managers and players giving abuse to the guy or arguing with his explanations.
Another thing that I would like them to be able to do is be given a day or two after a match to be able to issue or revoke any yellow/red cards that have been given out during the games.
There was a recent article on this website reporting that referees are now earning over £840 per match, do they deserve it ?
When some players are on perhaps ten times that amount per week then the referees may feel entitled to it and with the amount of money available in football, maybe the referees think they are important enough to merit such a high salary.
I am no expert on how a referee goes from a person who fancies being a football referee to a fully fledged SPL official. I don’t know much about what happens in between but I do know that it involves turning up at a lot of amateur games and involves being threatened and intimidated at small venues with no stewards or police for protection.
Maybe by the time these guys have gone through all of this, it’s time to say thanks for the last 10 years or so of hard work, now here is your reward, this is not my opinion but I am just adding it in to give a bit of balance to the piece.
There has been a lot of arguments for and against full time referees, like all things that haven’t happened, it’s impossible to say if that will improve the standard. Some sort of access to a replay certainly would help but it would also slow the game down if the ref is to stop the game every time a decision has to be made.
Why not give the fourth official or one of the many other officials in the stand access to a replay and if the ref gets something wrong, they can notify them ? They have ear phones and microphones so they can already communicate with one another.
The answer to that would be that not all grounds are capable of having such a thing. At Celtic Park there will be much more cameras than most other stadiums so does that mean that Celtic would be subject to a higher standard of refereeing depending on where our games are played ?
I think it’s an almost impossible task to improve referees but in my opinion, if refs were paid based on their overall performance, it would improve. It may add more pressure to them and it may make a tough job even more tough but for the money on offer, I wouldn’t expect anything other than a highly stressful and very difficult job.
If we are being honest, the problem is always going to exist simply because Scotland is full of such a small minded people like Hugh Dallas. Dallas was proven to be a bigot, not that we Celtic fans needed convincing of course.
Look back over the years with this example of the level of referees and see how any games Celtic lost with him at the helm, compared to every other referee. The results are startling to say the very least.
He eventually became so arrogant that he thought he could do whatever he wanted. Only one referee had the cojones to speak up sbout his bullying tacticts, and he has been black-balled fir his honesty!
Bias and bigotry in small-minded Scotland has always been a way of life we have faced and frankly, it is unlikley to go away anytime soon.
Almost every institution,company and organisation in Scotland has at some time been run with bigoted and bias attitude against Catholics.
Do people seriously believe that the SFA is some kind of island in the sea of excrement that has never been touched by this disgrace??? Even the monarchy of this country is still allowed to conduct itself in such a manner!!
Thats my point when Gers supporters try arguing “your paranoid” when bias is mentioned, how can people be so thick as to believe there isn’t and never has been anti-irish and anti-catholicism bias within scottish football?
So they honestly believe this problem existed within every aspect of scottish life, from housing to the NHS, but when it came to football it miraculously disappeared!?
Every single person in Scotland knows exactly what the Glasgow teams represented over many years, both more than just football clubs, yet people truly believe that in the countries most important sport the well documented prejudice and bias entrenched in scottish society (more so in the past) just what? Got/gets left at a collection point, like a nightclubs cloak room, when people enter football stadiums?
Nonsense, everyone knows the reality, the Rangers fans don’t have any reason to acknowledge it and the press and politicians are too scared.
Maybe as Celtic supporters there are times we are too quick to point the finger at refs for bad decisions, but really is that not a normal human reaction with all the bias?
How can we look at bad decisions and pick through which are bias and which are genuine wrong calls?
Scottish referees can’t be trusted and it is their own fault they probably never will, i wouldn’t be happy with anything but foreign referees now.
Three posts with valid points, we all know that the problem with refs are not going to go away, sometimes as said we jump to conclusions and overreact, after last year’s shenaniggins we thought we would get a free crack of the whip but first game refs called to book again with another bad decision on the Wilson offside.
I hope that when we get back to premier action after the friendlies we won’t have to moan but i doubt it.
My concern for the hibs game was the 2 linesmen maybe if they were punished we might see some improvement. If not or games fecked anyway.
I think the linesmen have become a lot more prone to “honest mistakes” over the last season or two.
Your 100% right mate but this season things have to change so we wait and see and watch with anticipation.
No more should we stand and watch any honest mistakes happen without questioning them 1 good goal chopped off already.