IF you had a magic wand and a few quid up your sleeve to fix one thing about Scottish football tomorrow, what would your priority be? How about importing a job lot of foreign referees, including those from England, Wales and maybe further afield? Maybe we could keep Scottish referees, just make them full time to allow them to properly hone their craft? Or perhaps now is simply the time to bite the bullet when it comes to having video assistant referee (VAR) technology to give them a helping hand?
Forget all that - how about simply going back to the drawing board with the role of the compliance officer, to avoid the perils of ‘re-refereeing’ matches on a Monday morning and ‘trial by TV’.
Hang on a minute, wasn’t priority one this summer something else instead? Namely, ensuring that all top-flight football is played on grass, rather than those dreaded artificial surfaces which are causing injuries all over the place. At least there is unanimity of players against that one. Apart from those at Kilmarnock, Livingston and Hamilton Accies, who play on it most regularly but weren’t asked.
I forgot one. What if, instead of throwing cash at any of this, existing monies should simply be re-distributed to provide more of a parachute payment for clubs who get relegated from the top flight? That way, instead of one poor managerial decision and a couple of flawed transfer windows being enough to alter their business model for good.
I hope you have been watching closely over the last fortnight or so, because all of the above have been floated as panaceas to solve our game’s ills. Not least of these is the top item, which was apparently floated in a summit meeting of the top 12 clubs and the SFA’s top brass as recently as Monday. It is the first time this idea has done the rounds since late 2010, when the governing body took it into their own hands to ask around the European refereeing associations for some assistance after Scotland’s senior referees went on strike in the wake of Dougie MacDonald overturning a refereeing decision in a Dundee United v Celtic match. It made Alain Hamer, of Luxembourg, an overnight star.
Anyway, the association – who are, of course, the clubs – acted swiftly and did what they usually do in such circumstances – appointed a working group to examine the issue. But the catalogue of slights, misdemeanours and proposed solutions only sums up the problem in Scottish football - consensus always seems to be elusive. And if there is no commonality of purpose about which of these brainwaves is best, how the hell are the SFA meant to implement them?
They might like give off the impression, but Scottish football clubs aren’t shopping in Waitrose, selecting a variety of off-the-shelf solutions to put in their trolley regardless of cost. No, they are pounding the aisles of Poundland, aware that they will have to stump up for whatever solution they choose from their own pockets. For some, morsels like full time referees and VAR are luxuries they can ill afford.
Just implementing VAR – the one of these developments which is most certainly coming, on a global sense, at least – illustrates the problem. With the cost per season to implement it across top flight grounds estimated at a minimum of £1.5m to £2m which makes it prohibitive for many clubs, the SFA and the working party are currently working out whether it should be implemented across the board, merely in broadcast matches, or whether those clubs which can afford it can simply go ahead and leave the rest behind.
As it will take referees fully a year to train up on how to use it, everybody has a bit of time on their side here. Given the way finances operate in Scotland, there might be merit to the idea of taking the first VAR downpayments out of accounts when the additional cash of the new TV deal kicks in, like a mortgage payment on pay day.
Matching the salaries of our current top-flight refs and making them full time is also out of the question, so the only way full-time refs could work if the SFA created an academy of younger ones at £30,000-£40,000 per annum. Our top-flight whistlers would rightly perceive that as a slight. But not quite as much as it would be to import their English and Welsh cousins.
AND ANOTHER THING
YOU know you are running
strongly when you can break two
British records in one race. I
was privileged to be at the
Arena Birmingham on
Saturday when Laura Muir
took five seconds off
Kirsty Wade’s British
indoor mile mark – with her
split time with 100m to go
also good enough for another
British record in the 1500m.
Barring any last-minute hitches,
Muir appears to be timing her run
just perfectly for the European
Indoor Championships in her
home city of Glasgow next
weekend, not to mention
gathering pace ahead of
this year’s Wo rl d
Championships in Doha in
September and next year’s
Tokyo Olympics. By
anyone’s standards, this a
remarkable athlete, who has
sacrificed many normal things for her
trade, all painstakingly compiled and
tracked on a series of spreadsheets
by her coach Andy Young.
A total of nine Scots will compete
in Glasgow next weekend, but a
vibrant sport all starts with the clubs,
and events such as Saturday’s
Lindsays X Country event at
Callendar Park in Falkirk.
Not only is the race for individual
places mighty, Central Athletics Club
are going for nine-in-a-row in the
team event to match a record set
between 1987 and 1994 by
Cambuslang Harriers.
While Andy Butchart will prioritise
the Euros amongst a start list which
is likely to involve the likes of Steph
Twell, Freya Ross and Derek
Hawkins, his confident predictions of
Central AC glory have stoked the mix
with Inverclyde AC, Corstorphine,
Edinburgh Uni Hare and Hounds,
Cambuslang and Shettleston all
hoping to deprive them of this place
in history.
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here