Like most sagas, Celtic and Scottish football have recurring themes.
Certainly, the scriptwriters at Heated Driveway Productions would often weave in the “working quietly behind the scenes” storyline apropos match officials.
For the avoidance of doubt, I was never convinced by this and found the basic premise essentially unbelievable.
It is hardly a controversial observation that the club set up by Irish immigrants in the hostile environment of Victorian Scotland has always had a somewhat complicated relationship with fitba officialdom.
Celtic’s ethnicity seemed to irk many in Fair Caledonia throughout my lifetime.
Moreover, this was something that the Fitba Fourth estate seemed quite comfortable with.
Indeed, it took introducing a new character, a journalist in Donegal, to write off one baddie.
Of course, the exit of one antagonist did not alter the main storyline.
In the interests of transparency, I would love to hear Crawford Allan’s professional opinion of the Madden Lundstram shitshow at Hampden.
I really would…
Today it was announced that this guy will be the referee for the season finale at Parkhead.
I immediately received a message from a sensible member of the Fitba Fourth Estate:
“Nowhere else in the world would you have this”.
Because of where he works, he has to keep such opinions under wraps.
It should be apparent to regular readers that your humble correspondent is under no such restrictions.
Yesterday the beautiful game in England received some excellent news.
A warning to readers this report does contain some Boris content.
The recommendations in this report are redolent of the final chapter of Downfall.
So, over to you, Holyrood!
Even if there were the political will in Scotland to bring in such legislation, it would necessarily take time.
In the meantime, Celtic should seek the introduction in Scotland for next season, the same rules that the English FA applies to referees in terms of declaring any club allegiance.
Moreover, the Parkhead club should do so publicly.
These changes would prevent referees from officiating at games of clubs they support.
Such rules would also apply to whoever is chosen as a VAR monitor and ensure that incidents on the field of play that fall within the scope of VAR will be fairly dealt with.
Until these reforms are brought in, the view from outside of Fair Caledonia is that Planet Fitba is something of a dysfunctional backwater.
If a level playing field is going to be part of the new narrative, then the old script will have to be ripped up.
My simple thought on this subject …is…
Do you think that the referee of a Milan//Liverpool/ or Manchester derby…would be allowed to go to a pub after the game… a pub which favoured one of the teams he had refereed earlier …and then had a drink with supporters ?
The obvious answer is of course….NO WAY !!
But then I ‘d have to remind you that this is Scotland… and in this bigoted wee cesspit…it’s not only accepted…it’s regarded as normal.
However, until our Club stands up and OFFICIALLY objects to people like Beaton and Madden handling our games …then things won’t change.
Our Club, however, by its silence on this and many other matters…is complicit in the joke that is Scottish football.
So nothing will change…again.!!
I see Mr Madden is refereeing the Greek cup semifinal. Presumably the Greeks can’t get any impartial refs.
Oh the irony of the Scottish refs taking the Greek shilling yet insisting nothing to see here!
Regardless, this latest slap in the face leaves them wide open to the obvious hypocrisy, and there will surely be no complaints over Greek refs providing reciprocity and running our VAR (?)
In ” The Mysterious Stranger”, Mark Twain suggested that, “Against the assault of laughter nothing stands.”. I think it would be funny if a Celtic supporters group set up a system whereby fans can buy raffle tickets stating the time when Sevco will be given a penalty to within a minute or so., When one of their opposition players will be sent off etc. £1 a ticket to win £100 and rest of the money could go to charity. I know the bookies will take such bets but this would help charity as well as putting it out there.
The board at Celtic will say nothing and will not put forward any proposals for reform. The only reason there was publicity given to the referee issue and Celtic is that ordinary fans / shareholders raised it at the AGM and Bankier had to comment and these comments were picked up by the press. I suspect when he saw the papers he wished that he hadn’t said anything.
Any declaration would set out dismissal consequences if it materialised a referee had lied. Also social media has introduced a level of transparency that makes the likliehood of a false declaration being identified as false pretense.
The key challenge here and something i would like to know more about is, despite the fact that aRangers supporting ref wouldn’t be permitted to ref a Rangers game, you could potentially have only Rangers supporting refs reffing Celtic games. Unless, the refs are not permitted to ref the games of the team they support pr their rivals but where would this stop?
Refs are emotional, the more you criticise the more decisions will go against. It’s a strange one to work out, Celtic have had huge success in Scotland recently, not so much in Europe.
If referees were requested to state their allegiance to any one club wouldn’t they just lie? Consequently, things would remain the same.
If they lie, they would then leave themselves open to being caught out. A wee story about a supporters bus, a season ticket, a photo at a stadium etc then their integrity is questioned more generally and not just about their football allegiance. This system appears to work in all the major European Football leagues but it only ever gets questioned in Scotland??
They could, but in this day and age it easy to look back on their social media and find the truth
There will be a run on Partick thistle scarfs in Bellshill
“a sensible member of the Fitba Fourth Estate”
Careful now, that might be jigsaw identification.
The continued silence from the CFC leadership about poor match officiating standards,
seems to further validate the lingering suspicion that our club chose to look the other way – with regards to the RFC collapse, the industrial scale cheating, and chose to block Resolution 12 – in its belief that CFC was ‘worth more’ with an Ibrox club existing. 🙁
What we have here is a Kulchur, and in so many kulchurs if you want change it has to be led from the very top I.E SFA/SPFL and Celtic themselves. For that reason I wouldn’t hold my breath. Governance and Scottish football are alien to each other, it only serves to pander to one club and Celtic are complicit in it as in my opinion they cannot see beyond the “ Old Firm “ brand.
You are 100% correct. The Celtic Board had the power to bury the the possibility of any club ever Playing out of the crumbledome again. They point blank refused to do it.
When PL had, or was at least said to have, clout in Europe, they had hard evidence of systematic cheating, by the former club,aided and abetted by the governing body, and they refused to use it.b
Hate to admit it, but I think you are right I think the Media may also be Complicit if they continue not to highlight the Bias reporting or lack of reporting but for now we just have to do it The Jock Stein way and beat them on the park
Totally agree Phil.
However, are there enough grade 1 refs whose allegiance would be towards a team not playing out of Ibrox or Parkhead? In the last cencus one in five people identified themselves as Catholic. Now it is not too ridiculous an assumption that if you follow football in Scotland and you have been raise as a protestant you will have either a passion for Rangers or at least an interest in how they are doing. Likewise, raised Catholic, follow Celtic. Maybe stretching the point but that might indicate that only 20% of refs in (the West of) Scotland would be Celtic ‘leaning’ while, well you know the rest.
To get round this unbalance Doncaster should budget for employing a percentage of refs from outwith Scotland to cover any sensitive games.
Won’t happen though will it.
Naw never happen and CFC WILL TURN A BLIND EYE ONCE AGAIN
I think you will find that your assumption that 1/5 of referees will be Catholic will be way out.
At the age of 17. ( many moons ago) I was told I wouldn’t be considered for a career in refereeing as I was a Catholic. I trained with the likes of Dallas, Tait, Dougal, Mottram, McVicar, Morrison.
I was picked up every Monday and taken to training at Wishaw Sports Centre and returned by one of the above who lived in the same “village” as me and the village and this gentleman feature prominently in the video “everyone but Celtic” . This went on for about two months. It was then let slip that most of the 15 of the students that had passed their exams had been getting watched every two or three games and had received regular reports and ways to improve.
I asked my mentor why I hadn’t received any reports. He got back to me the next week which was just after he had refereed A Celtic Rangers game. He asked me for directions to his home of 20 years ( the same street as the catholic church and less than a mile from my house) and when I asked why he had suddenly forgot the way home to a house in a village he had lived for years he mumbled something to do with memory problems. i told him the directions and he said “that’s why you’re not getting watched. You go to chapel every Sunday”. It turns out 3 out of the 15 that never received a report were the three Catholics. I raised this at a party shortly afterward. I was calling him every name under the sun and to my horror his son was present. He said his father was the most trustworthy and honest man in the world and I was making it up. I met the son a couple of weeks later after it was disclosed in a Sunday rag that his father had been having an affair with his secretary for a number of years. I simply said to the poor boy “Do you still believe your father could do that to your mum but would be 100% honest with me”. He obviously didn’t give a reply.
Tommy Burns played for Kilmarnock at the time and he was referred to as the Ginger fenian on a Monday night. Most, if not all, found this highly amusing.
I raised all of the above a number of times with journalists of a Celtic persuasion at Supporters Club functions ( some of whom still appear on radio most nights and every weekend). I was told to forget it as they wouldn’t be allowed to investigate and print the story,
The story ( or something similar) appears in Paul Larkin’s book although I have never talked to him about it.
Therefore when I read or see pictures of the current crop I don’t bat an eyelid. I know it happens. i’ve been the victim, I had no intention of every becoming Grade 1 because I wouldn’t have been able to be impartial. Some of the names mentioned brazenly talked about how they had cheated celtic or helped Rangers in front of their peers.
Thanks for sharing your experience trying to think of any Media out let that would give you a platform to air this but I can’t
Any change to the refereeing situation will be dragged out to, my guess is 5/6 years. The reform and an independent regulatory body will take many more years to be put in place, if it ever is.
These measures are the right thing to do, but so are many many other proposals ie. the most recent was the ani-Irish racism, because what was spoken about and has now somehow been shelved and will not be spoken about until there’s another reason to speak of it, and again it will be shelved and forgotten about all over again … till next time.
In Scotland these issues are periodically raised, proposals made and then forgotten about until next time, repeat rinse and repeat… ad nauseam.
I’ve seen this my whole life, talk, talk, talk… shelved.
Disgusting state of affairs, Scottish football clubs should be ashamed for permitting it, they really should. It benefits 1 kkklub, AND ONLY ONE.
And I sincerely hope I’m wrong, but experience has taught me differently.
Thanks Phil🇮🇪
The VAR should be on a similar basis to tennis where each team has a set number of challenges per half or game that way there is a degree of control by the clubs rather than picked officials and there can be minimal complaints.
Most of the 4th estate were savvy enough to declare their support for St Mirren , Airdrie , Motherwell or Hamilton as way of projecting a neutrality on matters between Glasgow’s bigger clubs, referees would simply do likewise . Maybe there should be a supplementary , aye but who’s yer big club? Much damage gets done by the brothers in games not involving the Ibrox battalion when they turn a blind eye to blatant cheating and thuggery in matches involving Celtic or a handy red/yellow is shown to a prominent player that rules them out of their next game should it be against the klan. Employing people from England instead of Lanarkshire may seem to be the obvious answer but we tried that with Regan and Doncaster , it didn’t help. Do refs from Luxembourg need visas now?
You vpuld just make it that no refs from North Lanarkshire can ref celtic v sevco games, it can be a ref from the North of Scotland.
What the clubs should do is tell the SFA to do one. The SPFL could tell them , we are hiring our own refs for league and league Cup matches. We won’t be using any of your refs.
Then all they have to do is make refs a full time job & advertise the jobs across Europe.
You would still have the SFA refs in the Scottish cup though
Interestingly, I read today that Bobby Madden will referee a Greek Cup semi. Is foreign referees the way to go?
Keeping in mind the fact that the brotherhood is a multinational organisation.
Which referees would correctly identify their allegiances though?
It sounds like youre expecting Celtic to find a backbone… just dont hold your breath
Maybe one day this will happen! I will then apply for another season ticket, until it is a level playing field I want remain an armchair fan.
If referees had to declare their allegiances, so they did not referee games involving their favourite, how would they find someone to officiate at games involving the Ibrox club? Suddenly, I suspect, you would find a plethora of enthusiasts for Partick Thistle, St Mirren etc.