Comment and review
Standard of refereeing in Scotland
Liam Kelly
Recent events in the Scottish game; particularly this weekend have braught the quality of refereeing in this country into the spotlight. The very fact that we are all talking about it suggests something is badly wrong, since one could define a well refereed match as one in which the man in the middle wasn't even noticed.
As a Hearts fan, i would admit myself that my opinion on this matter is already diluted, having experienced some extreamly questionable decisions; the linesman suddenly awarding Rangers a penalty to win the game when no incident had eventaken place at tynecastle a while back, Henrik Larsson diving around, Nakamura diving around...and so on and so on and so on. But surely Roman Romanov's comments that there exists a conspiracy in Scottish Football to favour the old firm are exaggerated. Indeed i do feel these comments are far fetched, and i believe that the cause of the problem, at least at the top level, is the fact that not only are these referees known Celtic and Rangers fans themselves, they are OPENLY old firm fans, so is it really any wonder they favour their teams? I would no doubt do exactly the same.
However, the fun really starts on this issue when you look at the lower levels; these leagues should consist of younger referees aspiring to get to the top. But ridiculous decisions take place here as well; todays sending off by all accounts was not justified, the Camelon match was ruined by a over zealous referee...but not only that, the smaller decisions today went very much against Arniston.
I would conclude from this that the referees at junior level football are in general very poor. Couple this with their inevitable bias when they get to the bigger leagues and the result is not pretty....crap AND bias referees! i cant wait.
The only solution here would be to import foriegn referees at the highest level to set a better example for the young aspiring referees at the lower levels...but will this happen? OF course not!.
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