WHETHER it was as a player or a manager, I was led to believe and I was told that you weren’t allowed to comment on a referee.

And I don’t mean just critically. You weren’t even allowed to say you thought that the referee had a good game.

You are told not to comment, good or bad, and you were not allowed to speak about them. For me, that is crazy.

You can’t have rules for some and rules for others, though, and Craig Levein was fully aware of what he was doing and saying when he criticised Bobby Madden on Sunday.

I don’t know the context of the comments from Neil Lennon that Craig referred to and the full story behind that.

Every manager or player has to take responsibility for what they say and if there are consequences then so be it. It is a bit tit-for-tat to say you will get away with it because someone else has.

But I think that managers and players should be able to express their feelings about how a referee has performed and have an opinion on it. At the end of the day, everyone has an opinion on the game.

And I think referees should be able to come out after the game and speak about why they made decisions and clear things up. Unfortunately I can’t see that happening, though, because it just seems too much like common sense.