There it is in plain sight.
The featured image is a choice of officials that would almost certainly be unthinkable in neighbouring England.
I have mentioned match referee Mr Nick Walsh in two pieces last year, here and here.
As Alan Morrison of Celtic By Numbers continually reminds me, in order to build trust, you must first remove doubt.
Having Mr Walsh as the chap with the whistle and Mr Beaton on VAR, there is plenty of room for doubt.
Yes, that Mr Beaton.
Dear reader, can you imagine this set of circumstances being allowed for any match, let alone a cup final in England?
Can you?
Firstly, no one in the FA would put any 0f their match officials in such an invidious position.
The last time I raised this issue, Buffering Bankier, the invisible chairman in the top chair in the Parkhead boardroom.
Now we have Celtic’s once omnipotent CEO who claimed at a club AGM that he had never seen the infamous Five Way Agreement.
Really Peter?
The Celtic fans will understandably bridle at this state of affairs, apropos match officials.
However, the people in the Parkhead boardroom seem content to allow this custom and practice at Hampden to continue unchallenged.
Following the 2021 AGM, this appeared in the media.
For the avoidance of doubt, the “we are working behind the scenes” spin doesn’t cut it.
The featured image is proof positive of that.
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Home International’s from back in the day. Scotland v England was always refereed by overseas official… the other games were not. Don’t recall any major controversy over this, if you for see a potential issue it can be prevented…. Common sense
There is no reason why the SFA / SPFL can’t get in English speaking German, Dutch, Scandinavian or (one for the Yoonyonist types) English referees to officiate and run VAR.
Well, we all know the reason…
What depresses me is that the clubs (mine included) don’t even raise the issue.
After all, I am sure that such luminaries as Beaton and Walsh could follow Bobby Madden south and be as big a success as he has…
Phil, some people will never listen to reason, let alone fact. Celtic take the fans for money and for mug’s. I inherited shares, some time ago, I wish Micháel was here he was good at taking up issues with Celtic. One of the best Celtic fans I have known he did wear his shamrock on his sleeve home away and abroad RIP Micháel mo dheartháir.
Keep at them Phil
TAL 🇮🇪
As far as I am concerned, the language displayed on the banner was totally unacceptable given there would have been children there and dare I say it in these Woke times, woman. Absolutely disgusting but the real people to blame are the board as this is a classic sign of utter frustration with being cheated week in week out, season in season out with no-one challenging it. They have let the side down but perhaps not as much as the board have.
Why don’t they bring a team from a totally different league final ? This includes all big games in Scotland.
CFC could publicly demand that Beaton is removed from this game – based solely on that infamous photo above.
Of course, the SFA would do SFA about it,
BUT it would add presure onto the match / VAR officials to avoid ‘honest mistakes’ in the Final?
I’m fed up with my club maintaining a ‘quiet dignity’, as it gets us absolutely nowhere!
Kick up a fuss BEFORE the Final.
Demand a wholesale review – and modernisation – of the of the match officiating standards.
The photo, to be clear – according to VideoCelts, who broke the story at the time – is a picture of Beaton in a pub frequented by Rangers supporters groups in Bellshill on matchdays, the day AFTER a Rangers-Celtic match which he officiated. The pub itself is a local Bellshill boozer. It’s not (either by the evidence of the photo itself or any other available evidence) a Louden Tavern type establishment. It’s just a Bellshill pub. The photo shows a man from the Bellshill area drinking in a Bellshill pub, smiling for a photograph almost certainly taken by an opportunistic Celtic fan, who was also drinking there (again, it’s not the Louden Tavern). If CFC publicly demanded any such thing they could forget about ever being taken seriously about anything ever again.
“Damian”, you seem emotionally committed to preventing a series of commonsense reforms ( like those in England) to remove the doubt of bias from match officials.
That, in itself, tells me a lot about you.
I’m busy.
Interaction over.
The crown bar is a rangers pub, there would be no opportunist Celtic fan in that pub on the night of the game and not as you state the day after. Beaton was advised not to attend the aforementioned pub but chose to ignore the advice given by a fellow official in another neutral bellshill pub
Bellshill regular
I had the misfortune to interact with “Damien” on the Celtic by Numbers Derby article.
As well as dismissing the strong, widely sourced evidence of others, he asserted his “facts” eg a quarter of all referees are Celtic fans, without any credible corroboration.
When pushed he identified Collum as a Motherwell fan (I’ve never heard this) but as one of 3 RCs (again I don’t know this) they obviously had a pro-Celtic bias.
Are you hearing the dog-whistle yet?
The best one was, when pushed, his evidence of pro-Celtic ref bias was when St Johnstone’s goal at Celtic Park was initially ruled out for offside.
The fact that we were 4-0 up at the time, we’d had a similar incident against us, the decision was made by the assistant and not “Damien’s” Celtic supporting ref and it was obviously going to be corrected by VAR, were no barrier to this heinous example of pro-Celtic bias.
Is that all he had? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it was.
Is “Damien” ever not at it?
I’m not sure what truth is in it. Apparently a Man Utd fan is refereeing the Cup Final between Man Utd and Newcastle?
Match officials in England must declare their club allegiance.
They also must in Scotland as well, just so they know who to give the Celtic and Rangers games to though.😂😂
Yes, the way it should be. It was a Man U fan who said Coote is supposed to be a Man U Supporter.
Can you show me where those allegiances are published?
If not, would you be satisfied with that arrangement for Scotland? That we are simply told, via unofficial sources, that referees have had to declare allegiances, but that there is no published record of what those allegiances are? This is your proposed solution? This would satisfy you, in good faith? You think it would satisfy others?
https://www.goal.com/en/news/which-football-teams-do-premier-league-referees-support/bltc5a6db7933177b98
Keith Hackett – the former head of Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), the organisation that makes refereeing appointments for Premier League games – has said: “At the beginning of every season the referees’ background information is audited.
“They complete a form that includes who they support, the history of if they’ve played the game and with the addresses where they are residing.
“That gives you a picture that comes into use when you’re appointing. It’s about ensuring, for example, you wouldn’t appoint a Sheffield-based ref for a Sheffield team.”
Northumberland native Michael Oliver is one official that has never hidden his affection for a club he grew up supporting, with there obvious restrictions on his match allocations as a result.
He told the Daily Mail: “I never referee Newcastle games. We have to declare if we have an allegiance to any club or if a family member works at a club.
“You can’t do any match involving that team and I can’t do Sunderland, either, for obvious reasons.
“Because Newcastle are invariably involved in a relegation battle, when you get to March or April, it means I can’t referee anyone around them towards the bottom three.
“If Newcastle needed a point to survive and the team they were fighting to get above was say Villa, I couldn’t referee Villa’s game either. I wouldn’t want to. It’s not worth the hassle.”
Incredible. They’d never go for it in Scotland… “for obvious reasons”
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/36075347
BBC from 2016.
Do referees have to say who they support?
Yes. And referees will not get appointed to the clubs they support.
“At the beginning of every season the referees’ background information is audited,” said Keith Hackett, the former head of Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), the organisation that makes refereeing appointments for Premier League games.
“They complete a form that includes who they support, the history of if they’ve played the game and with the addresses where they are residing.
“That gives you a picture that comes into use when you’re appointing. It’s about ensuring, for example, you wouldn’t appoint a Sheffield-based ref for a Sheffield team.”
Once more:
“I never referee Newcastle games. We have to declare if we have an allegiance to any club or if a family member works at a club.
“You can’t do any match involving that team and I can’t do Sunderland, either, for obvious reasons.
Failure to have this background audit in Scottish football is an opportunity for a culturally driven bias that is hiding in plain sight.
Only those who benefit from that custom and practice will object to adopting the English system.
A fairly major problem that I foresee, is that probably upwards of 90% of Scottish referees would have a sevco allegiance or, as in the case of Walsh a direct connection..
Damian, you could easily have googled that for yourself and found the information inside of sixty seconds. Why come into this forum and ask someone else for this “proof”, or did you genuinely think no-one would bother and you’d have the last sceptical word on the matter, as if that made it authoritative? I’m even more intrigued by you leaping to the defence of John Beaton; I’ve yet to meet a genuine Celtic fan who would consider doing that in these circumstances. Are you interested in declaring your own footballing allegiance? Mine is Celtic.
If Scottish referees do have to declare their club allegiance, we can expect lots of referee support for the diddy teams. Just like how Jabba claimed to be an Airdrie supporter and Chick Young pretends to support St Mirren.
Maybe some referees will say they support Rangers, thinking it’ll be OK because that club died in 2012. And as Sevco is a new club, there’s no conflict of interest.