Scotland’s top referees are looking for a pay rise in return for releasing their VAR conversations.
Celtic’s win in the December 30 has unleashed an incredible media backlash on referees as a then 74 match run of SPFL penalties without conceding a penalty barely rated a mention.
Late on in the Derby match David Turnbull was wiped out by James Tavernier in the penalty box with assistant referee Callum Spence wrongly flagging for offside, no VAR check was carried out with the incident largely overlooked with the exception of Celtic fans online.
Within a week of their defeat the Ibrox Tribute Act released three statements to their media partners, the final one revealed that they had requested that Willie Collum isn’t involved in their fixtures.
Unlike a marginal offside call against Kyogo Furuhashi in December 2021 SFA refereeing chief Crawford Allan has gone in to hiding leaving match officials open to all sorts of attacks led by Ibrox media partners.
When the SPFL season resumes match officials will be under more pressure than ever to comply with the messaging coming out of Ibrox.
Last night the BBC website reported an un-named referee saying:
The leadership have no idea of the pressures we are under and they’re just not prepared to support us properly.
We need more investment and better training. They rely on a lot of goodwill from the referees but they seriously fail to understand the pressures that come with the profile.
VAR has only increased that and we sometimes feel like an afterthought.
It seems that minimal training has been given over VAR with Ian Maxwell and Allan choosing to stay silent on the media onslaught.
Having created the mess it will be a costly exercise to train and increase payments to all match officials- that funding can only come from the clubs that suffered through the 74 match run when they were being refereed to different standards compared to the club from Ibrox.
Ha!
Those refs have some brass neck, if that is correct?
More transparency for more money? Aye, right!
Alternatively, if they are paid less, does that mean that the refs
wil be EVEN MORE secretive, and leave all paying supporters
in even more confusion / outrage at the dodgy officiating decisions?
Maybe the starting point should be:
why are clubs / supporters so dissatisfied with match officiating, [as ever] ?
The SFA offcials are regarded as corrupt and inept.
The Category 1 officials of The Scottish Referees’ Association are
regarded as corrupt and inept.
Replacing the SFA and The SRA would be welcomed by many / most
Scottish football supporters ?
The senior game today might just be in a much better place without
both of these orgamisations?
And as for refs thinking they ‘deserve’ more money…
just ask The SRA: why do you think you deserve more money when neither
FIFA nor UEFA want any of your members anywhere near their Finals Tournaments?
What training does a ref need to see the blatant handball at tynecastle ?.
More funding to increase their filthy cheating skills to aid Sevco of course…
VAR should have been the best thing ever invented to finally see an end to the ‘honest mistakes’ –
But no no – On no – Not in not so very Bonnie Scotland – And it will see an end to it all !
I find it strange…well not really. As VAR was strolling along nicely,one team happy with all decisions apart from one then all hell breaks loose and a change is required..
Probably cheaper to import professional refs from abroad.
Yep – But that’d mean a level playing field for Sevco so it’s never happening John…
We can only dream !