The introduction of VAR half-way through the Scottish football season was always going to cause controversy, even if it didn’t, our noisy neighbours from across the city would have created it anyway such is their paranoia.
What doesn’t help is the consistency, not just from referees but from pundits who continue to ignore the laws of the game and merely quote their opinion as fact. What’s worse is when they give their opinion based on what they think the law should be, not what it actually is – handball being the most obvious example.
Speaking to BBC Sportsound, via The Daily Record, former SFA whistler Stuart Dougal has been speaking about the decisions that went Rangers way on Saturday against Livingston – it might not be obvious but, again, no other club has the officiating in their games scrutinised to the same level.
“I would like to see more of these incidents awarded as penalty kicks, or free-kicks for the defending team. Shirt pulling back in the day when I was a referee without VAR, then it was much harder to give these. Because if you caught one, just take it as an Old Firm game, if you’ve caught one at missed one end and not at the other end, you’re accused of inconsistency and bias. Now we have VAR, most of these shirt pulls should be caught and I hope we see more of this.
“I am accused of being a referee sympathiser and making excuses for them. But if that was a referee’s mistake that gave a penalty and it shouldn’t have been, it would be headlines. It’s almost accepted that it’s ok that players make mistakes but not referees. So yes, I am a referee apologist when it comes to certain things.”
Dougal is right, VAR should help officials to make this type of call and improve consistency. Rangers fans will well remember the shirt pull that Kevin Clancy punished Niko Katic for only to ignore one even worse on Joe Aribo, although, maybe he just didn’t see it.
What Scottish football, and particular the media and pundits are bad for is criticising and dissecting calls that they have clearly got right in terms of how laws are applied. Take Connor Goldson’s handball in the last Old Firm as an example, in accordance with the IFAB laws, it is never a handball offence, and yet, they were still going on about it weeks later.
What chance have they got? You just know that if we win on Sunday, being the better team will have nothing to do with it and there will be weeks of wild claims and accusations – why anyone would want to be a ref in Scotland is beyond me!
This weekend was a classic, on SKY the following day both James McFadden and Eilidh Barbour referred to our penalty and the free kick which Tav scored from as ” one of these by the laws of the game ones ” but its harsh .Well , surely if its by the laws of the game it can`t be argued with .McFadden actually gave a different opinion on Saturday night on Sportscene when he said it was a penalty to Sunday on SKY when said it wasn`t . They are now debating clear fouls given to us and making it sound like we are getting decisions .There was a clear foul on Roofe whether the guy tried to pull out or not , he still caught him .The area and circumstance it happened it was always going to be a yellow.