Madden Was A Disgrace Today And It’s What Celtic Deserve For Their Passivity.

There are two great myths about refereeing this season which need knocked on the head.

The first is that Celtic have somehow put on pressure and that this has gotten results and the second is that only those games with big standout moments of controversy show our officials at their worst.

That, in fact, is one of the most dangerous, and pervasive, myths of all.

Officials influence games in any number of ways, and Madden certainly had an impact on that one today.

Please note, he did not decide the outcome.

Our players failed to show up for business and that is what decided the outcome. They lacked guts and guile and the officials played no part in that whatsoever, but still, his performance today was not without effect.

Madden stopped the game (usually in their favour) every chance he got. He gave decisions that were frankly embarrassing. He allowed certain players to throw their weight around.

I agree with those who say our players need to be physically stronger and stand up for themselves a bit more, but when they are offered no protection at all it’s a pretty hard sell.

Officials do not have to give penalties or send people off to change the outcome of games. They can penalise one team for everything it does whilst letting the other side away with murder.

They can interpret the rules in a way that suits their own biases.

What we saw today was nothing less than the man in the middle taking it upon himself to prevent one team from playing its natural game, and our team was already badly off form.

When you combine the two, that definitely makes a difference.

We are the only country in Europe which allows the kind of closed-shop system where officials don’t have to declare allegiances, and where the governing body allows a small group of individuals from one particular postcode to basically run the whole show.

We haven’t done enough – not nearly enough – to get reform and seem to consider it an afterthought.

We have five games left in this campaign, and the whole playbook will be utilised to make them as hard as possible for us, and we’re mugs if we remain passive in the face of that. We have been passive for far too long.

Our board stands accused, in certain quarters, of having put pressure on the SFA this season but this blog and others have been consistent in the view that in point of fact we haven’t done enough. A one sentence throwaway from the club chairman in no way constitutes a robust effort to get equal treatment for our football club.

Even if you don’t subscribe to the idea that referees in this country are biased – and most people still don’t, and we have to remember that – there is certainly nobody who would dare mount any argument that they are even semi-competent and yet our club and others continue to let the same officials get the same big matches over and over again.

That joker who wore the black and officiated today wouldn’t be regarded even in the second tier of officials in any other country and he’s not even the worst. Every club in Scotland knows that we have a refereeing “fraternity” which does not come up to snuff. Every club in the country allows this farce to go on.

VAR will make the big decisions less difficult to defend, but he didn’t need to send off a Celtic player or award Tavernier his usual penalty today to impact on our game plan … and that, VAR is not going to make the slightest bit of difference to.

We got what we deserved today in terms of our performance and in terms of the show Madden put on, and Sutton can shout from the rooftops that the display from the ref was as bad as he’s seen, and we can all agree with him, but there’s nothing any of us can do to change things. That is what our board is supposed to be for.

When our club offers such a hostage to fortune in the first place there are going to be days like these.