Once again, I have just watched a Celtic team with Brendan Rogers as the boss.Once again, Celtic dominated possession. We were the better team, we created the better of the chances.
And until such times that the referee decided that he wanted to be noticed, we were on our way to yet another victory.
Regardless of what the referee done, he failed to get a win for Ross County.
On Friday, I went along to the Celtic park training session and I was saying to my Dad that I thought the referees would be as eager as football teams will be to say that it was them who were the first team to “win” against us this season.
If we rewind back to the Motherwell game earlier in the season and think of the tackle that went in on Kieran Tierney, it was a horrendous challenge and if you have any doubts over it, the photos of showing the damage to Tierney’s leg confirms that it should have been a red card.
Some referees are just not very good. That would be OK, we could accept that. If it was the case that referees aren’t very good, then we’d get some baffling decisions going in our favour and some going against us.
However, in Scottish football, we don’t get what I refer to as match changing decisions going in our favour.
I mentioned the assault on Tierney. The reason that I did bring that up is that the referee who decided that was not a red card was the referee v Ross County who decided that a far less ferocious tackle by Scott Brown was worthy of a red card.
Why would that be? The SFA don’t have to answer to anyone because they are not accountable.
In the home match v Sevco earlier in the season, Kenny Miller was in the air with a two footed lunge. It would be practically impossible to argue that Miller was in control and that he was not endangering an opponent.
Some other Sevco player chopped down Roberts in what was a worse tackle than what Scott Brown was sent off for.
Against Inverness at Celtic Park, Scott Sinclair was very lucky to escape without an injury. No red card again.
I have said before that I could write a really long blog about decisions against Celtic. However, someone else has gone one better and wrote a book and made a film about it. Part of Paul Larkin’s ‘anyone but Celtic’ book and film show this much better than I can show by typing about it.
In the interview after the game, Brendan Rogers mentioned that there’s been a lot of bad decisions against us the season. More and more people are aware of what is going on but when will Celtic do anything about it?
I was very pleased to hear Brendan Rogers commenting on it after the game.He called the Ross county penalty for what it was – cheating.
I’ve said for a long time that I believe diving could be eradicated from football if the authorities wanted to get rid of it. If a player has very obviously cheated like the Ross County player did, why not give a 10 match ban?
When it is so obvious like today, a player could easily tell the ref that it wasn’t a foul and they could get on with the game. The ref could be allowed to have a quick look at video footage or an official in the stand could have a quick look and tell the referee that it’s a dive and no penalty.
The point that I am making is that the authorities could cut cheating if they wanted to but they clearly don’t. Think how far ahead Celtic would be if it was impossible to cheat against us?
I would also be happy to withdraw our team from the Scottish Cup and from the League Cup until such times that we are competing against football teams and not against referees.
In the past, I’ve been amazed that Celtic have ever won anything when you consider what we are up against. Given that we are now the only big club in the country, it really is about time that Celtic forced the SFA to provide us with impartial referees.