Same old, same old, Incompetence or cheating? Make your own mind up

[Joe O'Rourke]

What’s the old saying? “The more things change, the more they stay the same” I think the way Scottish Professional Football is run proves that old saying. I’ve being going to watch Celtic since the fifties, and there has been many changes in how football was viewed, both live at the park, and through firstly radio, and then through television. Every time new technology came into television I thought it would benefit Celtic, because it would help to expose any skulduggery on behalf of match officials, but astonishingly, nothing has changed, if anything, it’s got worse.

The big problem lies mostly with the people who control Scottish Football, and then with those who are charged with applying the rules during matches. You would think that the most important people in any football match would be the star players, it would be the men who cost and earn big money, who would have the greatest influence in a football match, but not in Scotland, the people who have the most influence are the match officials, and the people who appoint them.

In my opinion, you have basically two types of match official in Scotland, those who are totally incompetent, and those who are “Blatant Cheats” I can’t think of any who are just ordinary every day officials, although to be fair (which most of them aren’t) some of the younger ones may turn out to be decent at the job. Having said that, “Career Advancement” may be one of the main reasons for the cheating. Two of the younger ones being promoted as the future of refereeing in Scotland, are two of the worst, I’m talking about Nick Walsh and Don Robertson.

I firmly believe we also have a major problem with match officials failing to leave their club allegiances in the changing room, I could name a few here, but certainly John Beaton and Steven McLean head the list, it’s well documented that Beaton is a “Staunch Rangers Man” while McLean’s brother actually played for Rangers, not very well thankfully. That takes me to Crawford Allan the head of refereeing in Scotland, I’m pretty sure Mr Allan knows as well as any of us what’s going on in the game up here, and while VAR so far has been a disaster for every club except one, Mr Allan felt the need to comment once from his holiday home, and that was to comment on a goal by Kyogo which may have been about a toenail offside, no comment on Conor Goldson’s attempt to win the Golden Glove this season, or to explain exactly why not one penalty has been awarded against Rangers so far this season.

I said at the start I had absolutely no confidence that VAR was going to be a great help in Scotland, mainly because the people operating it, are either cheats, or totally incompetent. I believe the only way for transparency is for the match officials to be connected to the stadium public address system, and to the VAR room, so that any conversation can be open and transparent to those who by spending their money keeps the professional game in Scotland alive. Until these people are held to account nothing will change. In my lifetime, Celtic have been for the most part, been very successful, it just shows how good we have been, can you imagine how many trophies we would have won, if the game in Scotland didn’t favour just one team.
Glasgow’s Green & White. We never stop.