H is for Hugh Dallas
The departure of Gordon Smith, for whatever reason, brought a new CEO to the SFA and no sooner was that guy in the job – his name was Stewart Regan and people forget just how good a start this guy had – but he had to deal with two major crises and I still suspect that the source of both was the same.
The first involved the referee strike, the second involved the SFA’s head of referees; his name was Hugh Dallas. Darling of the media, hated by our fans.
Dallas gave one of the most celebrated refereeing performances of all time against Celtic, on the day Rangers clinched the title at Celtic Park by 3-0. He was hit by a coin from the crowd that day after sending Stephane Mahe off. Within sixty seconds of getting to his feet he had given the Ibrox club a penalty. I have rarely seen such a one-sided display. I have spent years telling people that it was one of the most biased things I’ve ever witnessed.
I have always believed Dallas was the guy who instigated the refereeing strike, at a time when Celtic were justifiably concerned about things that were going on. It came after Dougiegate, when a linesman resigned because he and the ref had gotten together and lied to our club about an incident. We still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of it when the media was told that our “harassment” of officials had prompted them to consider withdrawing their services.
Everyone at Celtic Park knew we were being smeared and used as a deflector shield for some of the real issues refs had with the Association; in truth it was all about money but they saw a chance to attack us and use us a means to get their cash.
Regan saw through it.
He said he would call in foreign refs if that’s what it took. And then into the mix, came Dallasgate.
It catapulted Phil to his early prominence.
He was the one who broke the story; it came from inside the SFA itself, which has always convinced me that someone wanted to bring the real motivations behind the refereeing strike to our attention. The news that Dallas had sent a sectarian email on an official SFA server was dynamite. What followed was allegedly even more incredible, as Dallas offered to bring the refereeing strike to an end if he could keep his job.
There was no chance of that; the outcry was more than he was ever going to be able to survive. Regan impressed everyone with the way he rejected Dallas’ pleas and removed him from the post. Or so we thought. The SFA was pulling yet another flanker on us, as we discovered later.
Dallas later turned up as one of UEFA’s top refereeing coaches … that could only have happened with the full endorsement of his old bosses at Hampden. They had fired him, but made sure he had a soft landing. They made it clear, not only to us but to the whole of European football, that they considered sectarianism as no big deal but something that had to be danced around for PR purposes. I cannot think of anything more disgraceful.