Without fear or favour

Without fear or favour

More years ago than I care to remember I stood on the old cinder steps of the Celtic end at Hampden on a freezing December night watching Celtic play Rangers in a league cup semi-final. The game was hard fought but Celtic had the upper hand and rightly took the lead when Tommy Burns carved open the Rangers defence and fed John Doyle who took great pleasure scoring at the traditional Rangers end of Hampden. The game was even thereafter until Davie Cooper cut into the box and Celtic stopper Johannes Edvaldsson went to deal with the danger. From the Celtic end I saw Edvaldsson clearly play the ball, Cooper theatrically threw himself to the ground and Referee Mr Alexander pointed to the spot. So incensed were the Celtic players that they let him and his linesman know what they thought of his decision. To compound the feeling of injustice he sent off Tommy Burns, up to that point the best player on the field, for his protests about the penalty award. There were other incidents in the game which led my young mind to ponder on the impartiality of the Referee. Rangers winning goal came from a Derek Johnstone run which one newspaper said, ‘could have been offside.’ Trust me he was but again the protestations of the Celtic players fell on deaf ears.

Celtic were to lose that game 3-2 and it was the first time I can recall going home from a game feeling that the officiating had clearly had a major influence on the outcome. Of course to suggest a referee is biased against a particular team will get you short shrift from most of the media and lambasted as a bad loser by those who have benefitted from these ‘errors’ by officials. It is simply too much to contemplate for some that the game in our country isn’t 100% honest.

Books like ‘Celtic Paranoia?’ list incidents down the decades which on sober reflection look distinctly dubious. We all know about the SFA closing Celtic Park for trouble at Ibrox. We all know about the SFA threatening to throw Celtic out of the league if they didn’t remove the Irish flag from their stadium on match days. We all know Jim Farry blocked the registration of Jorge Cadete with no apparent reason for two months at a vital time of the season. We all know internal inquiries cleared him until an exasperated Fergus McCann called in his QC and forced the SFA to admit Farry had acted in a manner which constituted gross negligence. He was sacked and left office with a £200,000 pay off. It remains difficult to see how anyone fired in such circumstances could be deserving of such a payment but then a lack of transparency is nothing new in Scottish Football.

In more modern times we saw bizarre officiating at a Rangers v Dundee United match in the spring of 2008 which had then Dundee United boss Craig Levein seething. We saw Rangers player Boughera booked early in a match against Celtic for a brutal foul on Celtic’s Robbie Keane and then commit a further seven or eight fouls on the same player without a second yellow card appearing. The hand ball from Keatings of Inverness in a cup semi final at Hampden was seen by everyone in the stadium except the five officials! We had the ‘Dougie, Dougie’ affair when a referee admitted lying about a rescinded Celtic penalty at Tannadice. We recently saw Scott Brown booked for a ‘tackle’ on Kyle Lafferty in which no contact was made and the Rangers forward clearly simulated injury. No retrospective action was taken. We have a former referee boasting from the safety of retirement about Rangers never losing a game he controlled, another speaking sarcastically at a sports dinner of being ‘unsighted’ for a Celtic penalty claim. All of this feeds into the ‘ABC’ mentality (Anyone but Celtic) in which some see certain officials as at best leaning towards Rangers and at worst being biased. The aftermath of most of the above examples was handled poorly by the SFA and often exacerbated the situations.

All of this came to mind in the wake of the controversy over John Beaton’s performance at Ibrox las week and the fact that the review panel didn’t act over Alfredo Morelos’ actions in that game as they were informed the referee saw the incidents. Firstly, Rangers were the better side by far on the day and deserved their win but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be asking what is going on with the standard of refereeing in Scotland. If Mr Beaton saw the three much publicised incidents which involved a stamp of Anthony Ralston, a kick on Scott Brown and a virtual sexual assault on Ryan Christie as he apparently reported to the SFA then why on earth did he not even award a foul let alone apply the rules of the game and at least card Morelos? 

Any objective observer would view that game and conclude that the officiating was very poor indeed. Chris Sutton, a man once sent off at Ibrox for two innocuous hand balls was scathing of the footballing authorities and said…

If they had applied the rules correctly then El Buffalo would have been on the end of three separate red cards. That means three bans, six games, or even more if they pushed him through the disciplinary points totting up threshold. But yet again it looks like the SFA have bottled it. They know there would have been a huge outcry from Ibrox, but if that’s the reason Beaton has stuck to his guns then it’s either cowardice or corruption, take your pick.

Of course Sutton writes for a tabloid and it’s his job to get people reading, clicking and talking about his articles but there is a kernel of truth about what he is saying. If Referees were allowed to speak after games and explain why Steven McLean of Hearts was retrospectively banned for two games for grabbing Eboue Kouassi’s private parts and Morelos didn’t even receive a foul against him for a similar offence the referee claims to have seen? Celtic was not impressed by the officiating at the match at Ibrox and commented…

‘Celtic football club is surprised that there will be no disciplinary action taken by the SFA regarding incidents during the match on December 29^th, which were widely addressed by the media. It is reported that no action will be taken because the match referee saw all of the incidents in question. Given that the referee took no action at the time, this tends to suggest that such conduct, which in one instance led to a Celtic player, Anthony Ralston being injured, is acceptable in Scottish football. That cannot be right.’

Celtic then go on to say that in the interests of transparency, referee John Beaton should be able to explain these decisions publically. The alternative is for suspicion to fester and alleged pictures on social media of the official apparently enjoying himself in a well-known Rangers Bar don’t exactly allay fears he may be less than impartial. Football is a fast moving game with crucial decisions having to be made in a split second. Jock Stein once said, ‘if you’re good enough the referee doesn’t matter,’ but even he tore into officials after matches like the disgraceful Scottish Cup Final of 1970; a game which is mysteriously hard to find on YouTube in any detail beyond the goals.

We need to accept in a small country such as Scotland that match officials will have favourite teams and that in an ideal world this won’t stop them from performing their duties with integrity. We want our referees to be the best in the business, to be above reproach but currently they are doing little to help their own reputation. Transparency is one way to foster confidence in the refereeing fraternity. Let them speak about why they made certain decisions and even accept it when they say I got that one wrong. Refereeing is a difficult profession to practice but we can surely do a lot better than we currently are?

The alternative is to have supporters talking about officials more than the game itself and openly accusing some officials of bias. In the clannish world of Scottish football that can’t be right. The SFA needs to show some leadership here. Have professional referees, introduce VAR in the top flight and let the referees explain themselves a day or two after matches. The absurdity of a panel made up of former referees being unable to recommend retrospective punishment for on field misbehaviour on the grounds that the match official ‘saw it’ also needs to end. Just because he ‘saw it’ doesn’t mean he made the right decision.

We all love the game of football but it must be seen to be played on an even playing field with officials applying the laws of the game without fear or favour. If that’s not the case we might as well pack up and go home.