REFEREES in Scotland aren’t biased. They also aren’t very good at their jobs.

The decision to send Ryan Jack off against Hibernian last weekend proved costly for Rangers on the day. Thankfully he won’t be missing for the game with Hearts this afternoon after that red card was overturned by the Scottish FA.

It is hard to tell how these appeal panels will go sometimes. Look at the incident with Scott Brown up at Ross County last season. That was a stonewall red card, but he got away with it.

I don’t think Ryan’s was a red card and Rangers would have been really, really unlucky if they hadn’t managed to get it overturned. For me, there was nothing in it.

It all comes down to the panel that are there on the day and there is always a chance that they might see it differently. Rangers will be pleased their appeal was successful.

The sending off was the turning point against Hibernian. When you go down to ten men, what a lift the opposition get, especially when they should have had a man dismissed long before Ryan was shown a straight red.

The Anthony Stokes incident was bad officiating. When did it become acceptable to grab someone round the neck and throw them to the ground?

That was a poor decision but it wasn’t surprising when you consider the standard of refereeing in this country. I have said that for a long time.

We do have officials that get games in European ties and handle international fixtures. But how many times have we read after these games that players or managers have had a go at them for poor decisions?

We all know that it is a hard job, of course it is. But our referees have to get better at it.

Fans and pundits are within their rights to say that a player had a bad game or that a manager got it wrong. And we are quite right to say when referees have made a mistake as well.

When an official gets things wrong too often, then he should be put down a league or two. He can’t just get away with it week in week out in the Premiership.

These things have to be looked at very closely by John Fleming and those in charge of the referees in Scotland.

At least this week we have seen something being done about it and neither John Beaton nor Craig Thomson will take charge of a Premiership fixture this weekend. John will be at Dunfermline for their match against Falkirk, while Craig will do the game between Livingston and St Mirren.

That is John Fleming and his team acknowledging that those two officials have made mistakes and they have to pay for it. That is the way that it should be.

I think the quality of refereeing in Scotland is poor. It has nothing to do with bias, that has never entered my head about an official in our game.

But, the way that they do their job has to be questioned because we see too many poor decisions being made here.

We all make mistakes, of course we do. Players and managers make mistakes so it is only natural that referees will get things wrong.

But they are making them too often and it is costing teams. It could cost them a win, a cup or a European place.

It is crazy to think that there is a bias or an agenda against any team. There is nobody against anybody.

People always say that it evens itself out over the course of the season but I don’t think that it does for many clubs. It is too easy to say that and it is not always the case.

I have to stress, I know it is a hard job and it is one that I wouldn’t want to do. But, if you are prepared to take the responsibility and the wages then you are expected to get the big decisions right.

I am not talking about a throw-in here or a corner there. I am talking about major decisions, the likes of red cards and goals.

They are the calls that can change the course of a game, that can change the fortunes of a club.

It has been said before that our referees should be full-time and that would make them better. I think that would make them fitter, but would it increase the number of decisions they get right?

Those split-second calls still need to be made and that is what the good referees do – they get those ones correct the majority of the time.

It is easy for us to look at it from various camera angles and say ‘he has got that badly wrong’. The referee gets one shot at it, and that’s it.

So we should be using cameras to give the refs a hand when there is a flashpoint or they are not sure exactly what has happened and what course of action they should take.

I think it is worth stopping the game for a few seconds, allowing the referee to have a look at it and then he can make his decision.

I don’t want a man in the standing saying ‘I have looked at it, it is a penalty’. He is not the referee. It is the referee that has to see it and make a decision.

It might take a bit of time, but we would rather have the right outcome than the wrong one. It is as simple as that.