Michael Stewart has spoken out for football fans across Scotland by telling the SFA that Willie Collum isn’t fit for purpose.
Collum was at the heart of controversy on Monday night after awarding Inverness Caley Thistle a penalty against Aberdeen.
The golden whistle of the refereeing circuit seems drawn to incidents in the penalty area, inevitably awarding penalty kicks from innocuous incidents that barely attract an appeal from the attacking team.
In successive fixtures in December Collum wrongly awarded penalties to Falkirk, Sevco, Aberdeen and Inverness Caley Thistle. After Sevco wrote to the SFA following their game at Falkirk they haven’t had Collum in charge of any match.
In August when Robbie Neilson revealed that Hearts train to play with ten men when they have Collum as a referee they have avoided having Collum appointed to referee one of their matches.
“It beggars belief how Willie Collum can still be refereeing at the top level of this game,” Stewart told listeners to Radio Scotland last night. “There’s just far too many of the big decisions he gets wrong.”
Discussing the penalty incident in the Caley Thistle v Aberdeen match he added: “I think anybody who was watching that on the television could see instantly that, yes, the two feet were high, but there was no contact.
“Ross Draper fell down in an artificial manner because, if he’d been kicked, he would’ve spun the other way.
“It goes without saying that Ross Draper needs to be bearing some of the brunt of the criticism, but this isn’t a case of a different referee every week – the recurring theme is that it’s Willie Collum.
Since being groomed by Hugh Dallas Collum has risen through the ranks of Scottish refereeing regardless of his bizarre interpretation of the rules.
Every club in the country, and several on the continent have complained about Collum who has risen up the UEFA ranking again thanks to Dallas.
Stewart was highly critical of the way that referees are appointed to matches in Scotland with no apparent accountability or repercussions for below par performances.
On Saturday supporters of Raith Rovers and Livingston will have to suffer Collum taking charge of their match.
Fans of every club in Scotland will be watching Collum closely at Euro 2016 hoping that a typical performance in front of a global audience will finally raise questions as to how the man with so little ability has been pushed so far in the game- at the expense of other more competent officials.