The SFA are planning a new year summit over honest mistakes with the subject of VAR (Video Assistant Referees) to be discussed.
Already this season three players have been given retrospective suspensions for incidents missed in matches against Celtic.
Over the last week there has been a catalogue of honest mistakes with Celtic on the end of another Clancy clanger when a perfectly good ‘goal’ from Filip Benkovic was disallowed against Motherwell.
Had that goal stood there is a very good chance that Brendan Rodgers’ side would have taken full points and be top of the league.
On the same night Aberdeen’s Sam Cosgrove was red carded by Steven McLean for getting kicked by Connor Goldson which followed on from Bobby Madden’s ‘abysmal’ performance as Hearts lost 2-1 to the Ibrox tribute act.
With the same referees constantly getting the top fixtures and lucrative European and International appointments it seems that things can only get worse force Ian Maxwell to call a summit.
Speaking to the Daily Record the SFA Chief Executive explained: “I had tried to get a bit of discussion going about VAR because we’ve never scoped it out properly.
“There has been anecdotal talk about it costing X or Y but we’ve never got to the bottom of exactly what it would cost, what an implementation plan would look like.
“I was at an IFAB (International Football Association Board) meeting two weeks ago and more countries than not are now looking at implementing it.
“We discussed that yesterday and agreed that, alongside the SPFL, Neil Doncaster and I would go and have a serious look at it.
“That then rolled into a more general discussion about refereeing.
“We discussed various ways of bringing everyone together. It feels like there is a lot of negativity around any refereeing decision that is maybe not as good as it should be.
“It’s highlighted in the media and that’s kept going. It’s perpetuating the cycle of managers being critical of refs.
“There’s a view, certainly within this building, that we want to address that, want to stop that – and get everybody in the same room at the same time to talk through how we can understand issues, concerns and where each other is coming from.
“We can hopefully help people understand our assessment and training and get across to managers that we have no issue with them saying a referee made a poor decision.
“We have no issue with them saying a referee’s performance was poor. But there are ways to say that. It’s not the image that we need, in terms of constant criticism.
“Everybody who is involved, get us all around the table and get as much engagement as we can. The plan would be to open up regular communication lines, whether that is even just three or four times a season. Having that engagement over a long period will lead to far better understanding and far better communication.”
Until the dominating power of the Lanarkshire Refereeing Association is broken and referees are banned from being involved in matches involving their favourite club- and rivals- Maxwell is wasting his time.
Referees in Fife, Aberdeenshire and the Highlands know that their promotion prospects are much less than the area that has produced Willie Collum, Madden and Andrew Dallas.
As they promote referees at a younger age onto the FIFA list and continue to provide them with the top matches regardless of their performances there is no prospect of the problem easing.
