Willie Collum, for once, had a good game in the middle for the third Old Firm of the season, only really getting one decision wrong – the decision not to send off Odsonne Edouard for a second dive in the box, something that wasn’t reported by the Scottish media or even merited being shown on Sportscene.
The circumstances surrounding the fixture led to it being a rather tame affair, one team allowing the other the bulk of possession, the other knowing that they had nothing really to play for, but there have been plenty of mistakes made by the men in the middle recently to suggest a change of tact and former Premier League whistler, Kenny Hackett – speaking to Football Insider – may have an idea:
“The thing that I really liked was the captain of Celtic, Scott Brown, prior to kick-off in the warm-up going over to Glen Kamara and offering his support.
“I thought that was unusual in an Old Firm derby. Perhaps the one thing that I recognised is that there wasn’t as much passion in that game because there were no fans.
“That’s what I’m missing. I’m a referee and I like the game, don’t get me wrong, and I want it to be played fairly.
“But it’s a completely different game when you’ve got fans in the stadium and you’re playing that Old Firm derby.
“It’s a game that, over the years, I’ve watched and, particularly when I was an active referee, I always thought ‘when are the English FA and Scottish FA, going to get their heads together and come up with an exchange programme. When can an English referee go up and have the opportunity of refereeing that game.’
“When you look back Scotland have had some terrific referees that could have come down and refereed a derby game in England. But it isn’t going to happen.”
The biggest issue we have in Scotland is that the referees aren’t full time and that there is a constant conspiracy about them supporting one side of the Old Firm or the other, if we were to draft in the top referees from England we would see an end to that and a return to good old fashioned mistakes rather than ones made because of an “agenda”.
With the SFA volunteering itself for a VAR “lite” trial, the refs will at least be getting a bit of help soon, however, as we’ve seen from the last Old Firm, even when presented with irrefutable evidence, some will never admit to what they are seeing with their own eyes and cry “conspiracy” at every opportunity.