Humiliated referee put in charge of Glasgow Derby with Andrew Dallas as back up

Nick Walsh will referee Sunday’s Glasgow Derby with Andrew Dallas looking over his shoulder on VAR, Hugh’s laddie was also on VAR duty for Celtic’s title clincher at Tannadice on Saturday.

Last season Walsh was clearly the top Scottish referee, taking charge of two Derby matches, Celtic’s 2-1 victory at home in December then the Scottish Cup Final when he denied the hoops two first half penalties as Kyogo Furuhashi was chopped in the penalty box with Ben Davies escaping punishment for deliberate handball.

John Beaton was given the first two Derbies of this season, Don Robertson was in charge at Ibrox in January with Steven McLean getting the March fixture at Celtic Park.

Even by SFA standards Walsh has had a poor season, fitting in matches between his day job working daily with the Murray Park starlets at Boclair Academy.

In January he was in the headlines for sending off Mohamed Diomande away to Dundee United, after being told to review the decision he stood by his original call.

BBC Scotland and Sky Sports were outraged at the decision, soon after the match they were briefed that the SFA stood by the match decision but on appeal Diomande had the red card overturned.

Explaining the u-turn Willie Collum told the VAR Review:

We’ve had lots of discussion about this incident. We’ve coached the match officials that we don’t think it’s a red card.

We agree with the viewpoint that the VAR talks about when assessing the incident about excessive force, brutality.

Is there contact in the face? Is it negligible? So for us here, we prefer a yellow card. The referee goes to the monitor, he’s entitled to stick with his decision and for him there is a slap.

For us, we would prefer though a yellow card for this action. What I want to be clear about is there’s a clear action.

There’s also a clear action by the Dundee United player as well and potentially the best outcome here is a yellow card for either player for the aggressive action of both players that happens after an initial free kick is awarded.

But for us, this incident doesn’t have excessive force, it doesn’t have brutality and the contact, you know, is negligible if any.

If you go back many years ago it was written in the laws of the game, strikes or attempts to strike an opponent and potentially under the laws of the game with that kind of terminology, you would see a different outcome.

But now the threshold is about excessive force, brutality and negligible contact as well.

We’re coaching [referees] every single week, we’re talking about how to be consistent.

I really like in this clip as well about the VAR showing different angles, they also are very clear, they don’t show the first image slow motion, because again, we said don’t show things in slow motion, show it in full speed.

Walsh will know what is expected of him at Ibrox on Sunday, if in doubt he will have Dallas as back up. On Monday he’ll be back at Boclair Academy.