Scottish Referee Crisis – 23/11/10

Well it seems that Scottish referees have had enough, good on them. After weeks of people coming out in the papers and slating everything that referees are doing they had a meeting and decided that enough was enough.

I’ve got to agree with this stance as they are being expected to do a perfect job each week and no one can do that as we are only human and humans make mistakes. Have Neil Lennon and John Reid done their jobs perfectly for their entire lives? I think not, especially as Celtic are not topping the league and have been dropping points recently. Surely time that Lennon stopped moaning about what other people do and concentrated on his managerial career and helping his beloved Celtic win something. I would happily see him fail and get out of Scottish football as he is an annoying little man who never sees the wrong he does and always looks for someone else to blame, if he thinks that’s the way to become a great manager then I think he needs to look at some of his predecessors and see how they behaved. I suspect it was in a different way to how he handles himself. As for his chairman, he is just sticking up for his manager but there has got to be a better way of doing it. There is no conspiracy and never has been, where’s the proof? Why would all of Scottish football have something against Celtic? It is a lot of paranoia which has gone on for far too long.

I have great sympathy with the referees who take weekly abuse and who’s families are abused for decisions they have made, there is no way this should be happening to anyone for doing their job. The respect campaign may not have reached Scotland yet but it should. Is this the right way to go about things for the referees to get some respect? I’m not sure, but they have to do something. If they go on strike this weekend then it will cause chaos in Scottish football from top to bottom. Clubs rely on the income from gate receipts and will be praying that they don’t lose the money they were expecting to make this weekend as money is tight for everyone in football at the moment and more so in the lower divisions.

The potential loss of earnings for everyone and the fact that these events will be watched throughout the world has to make the SFA sit up and take notice, speak to the referees and see how this can be resolved, speak to the club chairmen and get them to take out their grievances with referees in a more sensible way. Only by doing this will we see a sensible resolution and stop all this nonsense about conspiracies, biased referees and people acting like children when something doesn’t go your way in a game. There should be a system in place where managers can talk to someone about issues concerning referees instead of coming out in the press and slating them on a weekly basis, this would allow these problems to be resolved in private and leave the referees to do their job without every fan thinking that the man in charge is corrupt or doesn’t know what he’s doing just because one of the leagues managers says so.

It has to stop now and we need a sensible solution which will leave Scottish football looking like a pioneer of new ideas and respect for referees rather than it dragging on and Scottish football looking like the joke that many people already think it is. It would be a shame if this was to carry on for too long and ruin what little reputation the Scottish league has, its embarrassing enough that there has been no competition outside the old firm for the league for many years and that our other clubs rarely make it into Europe without a couple of people picking on referees because they believe in some idiotic conspiracy from yesteryear putting the final nail in the coffin for Scottish football. If the referees strike this weekend then it is highly likely that we will become a laughing stock and will the guilty parties come out and say anything about it? They have kept quiet for the past couple of days so I reckon they will continue to do so and attempt to absolve blame from themselves. If you can’t come out and stand up to what you have caused then don’t open your mouth in the first place!

P.S – For anyone who didn’t know already, the strike did take place but the SPL games were saved (I watched Aberdeen vs Kilmarnock being refereed by an Israeli ref, he was pretty good) and the SFL who had nothing to do with any of this nonsense were the ones who had their games called off and lost a lot of money. It seems that the refs will now sit down with the SFA and sort something out and hopefully we will see a sensible resolution. Also, I hope the SFL clubs do seek compensation as they are rumoured to be doing as it is totally unfair that Celtic got to play and three divisions of SFL teams didn’t.