SFA bottle out of Willie Collum decision

The SFA has bottled out of announcing the match officials for this weekend’s Scottish Cup ties.

Almost certainly every referee and assistant will know the fixture that they will be involved in with the weekend kicking off on Friday night when Clyde host Aberdeen.

One fixture will be the focus of attention when the SFA finally decide to go public with their appointments and that is who will be in charge when Philippe Clement’s side travel to Dumbarton for a tea-time kick-off on Saturday.

As they leaked statements to media partners the information given to Heart & Hand was the most toxic, a request had gone in to the SFA not to have Willie Collum involved in future matches.

Most of the usual cheerleaders realised that a line had been crossed, requesting no Collum appointments was one thing but going public with David Edgar took the issue to another level entirely.

Normally the SFA publish the schedule of match officials in mid morning on a Tuesday but going on for 8pm at night the website has stood still with no mention of the Fourth Round refereeing appointments.

They did announce that Steven McLean will referee next week’s match away to Hibs, for extra assurance Andrew Dallas will be on VAR duty, his second successive SPFL fixture involving the Ibrox club.

It would be a major shock if the SFA had the courage to appoint Collum for Saturday’s match. John Beaton refereed the pre-break fixture at home to Kilmarnock which leaves David Dickinson and Alan Muir as the most obvious candidates for the Dumbarton match.

With each passing fixture that Collum sits out it will seem that the SFA dances to the tunes from Ibrox and their fan media partners.

Back in season 2018/19 Collum went six months without refereeing a match involving the Ibrox club after he sent off Daniel Candeias against St Mirren.