That which is cultural is not amenable to reason.
I recall an interaction with an English journalist in the summer of 2012 when I tried to give him some equivalent of Rangers in his country, apropos the incestuous relationship between Ibrox and the football authorities at Hampden.
Dear reader, I couldn’t find any club that had such a close connection to the FA over many generations.
Concerns about this rather bowling club cosiness still lingers when it comes to match officials.
The featured image demonstrates how they do things in England.
Quite simply, ANY official with a close emotional connection to a football club cannot officiate at their games.
Tomorrow at Hampden, a cynic might conclude that the man in the middle might lean to one side.
That isn’t Mr Beaton’s fault, and it should not imply that I am stating he will not officiate fairly tomorrow.
However, it is incumbent on authorities to remove doubt.
Consequently, he shouldn’t be anywhere near that fixture.
It is alleged that the boy Beaton declared his love for Rangers.
Well, I grew up loving Celtic, and I still do.
Therefore, any idea that I would be neutral between my club and their nativist neighbours is preposterous.
I mention this matter because the local media are consistently silent on the subject.
Remove the Fourth Estate from the equation, and bad things usually happen.
If journalists do not hold power to account, then they’re no longer journalists.
In the build-up to the final, the PLZ Soccer people thought it perfectly ok to have Mr Hugh Dallas in the studio as an authority on excellence in officiating this fixture.
There was a time when the same chap was head of refereeing development at the SFA.
Unfortunately for him, by that time, your humble correspondent was working the Planet Fitba beat, and I broke the story that led to his sacking.
The Guardian in London thought the story and my role in it to be newsworthy and commissioned me to write this piece about my part in his downfall.
However, the Stenography Corps remained obediently silent.
Why should this be so?
Well, in the years since I broke the story on Hugh Dallas, my settled view is that some of them are invested, and some are invertebrates.
Like the death of Rangers in 2012, it took outsiders to explore what was going on in Fair Caledonia regarding the Ibrox entity.
However, it really shouldn’t take a journalist in another country to point this out.
Native Shore
I received a note from my publisher that there was a substantial increase in online orders immediately after this piece.
Míle buíochas!
PLZ does anyone actually watch that shoite..
Are the SFA not putting these refs in a compromising position?
Imagine Clancy giving Celtic a throw in by mistake, and he then gets death threats, or his house / car attacked….
Yes , I m being the devil’s advocate, but we did get that throw in 35yrs ago.
So, these refs should not be anywhere near Celtic or R2ngers games. It’ll take out unnecessary controversy and foreign refs must be the way forward.
It might just help domestically and improve national team too.
The fundamental problem in Scotland is that anyone interested enough in football to want to referee a senior game will almost certainly have a long-established preference for either Celtic or Rangers (in its various incarnations). The only way to overcome this would be to buy in referees from overseas (and preferably not from Britain or Ireland) on some kind of exchange basis that allows Scottish referees to officiate at top level fixtures in other leagues to make up for their exclusion from Scottish fixtures.
It is tempting to say that the current version of the rangers needs all the help it can muster when going up against the mighty green and white.
With Celtic being top dogs in Scotland and the game on Sunday being a cup final, you would expect a top quality referee to officiate. Beaton is not a top quality ref.
Worse than that he is known to have a soft spot for the opposition on Sunday so you are right, he should be no where near this game but we all know why he gets the gig.
As wrong as it is, it will not matter a jot as the champions of Scotland will be far too good for the new rangers. Even a wee improvement in recent form will not be enough for them on Sunday. A comfortable six or seven nil victory for those Bhoys in green and white HH
I refereed as a lowly grade 3 when I lived in Suffolk in the 90’s and it used to cause much hilarity amongst my erstwhile refereeing colleagues when I used to write Glasgow Celtic FC as the team I support as there was not a snowballs chance in hell a Suffolk based grade 3 referee would ever get anywhere near a game.
Still, I had to complete that section, it was mandatory for EVERY official under FA rules.
No exeptions.
I think Real Madrid’s position as the establishment team under the Franco regime (and to some extent, even now) is the nearest you will get to the kind of elevated position and exceptionalism that Herrenvolk FC of Ibrox enjoys amongst the blazers at Hampden, Phil.
When I questioned PLZ in the comments section of the above video, their blasé response suggests they are actively looking to upset.