First Half Events At Ibrox Sum Up The Continuing Scandal Of Refereeing.

The first half at Ibrox today has summed up how ridiculous officiating, and our system of officiating, works in this country.

The opening goal for the home side was scored by none other than John Lundstram, who got a straight red last week and arguably deserved it, shortly after James Sands should have seen red for wrestling a player to the ground when already on a yellow.

The whole debate over refereeing in the last week has been built on an entirely fictitious premise, all of it predicated on the idea that the Ibrox club are hard done by. If you accept that the Lundstram decision was wrong – I would debate that – then fair enough. But it was the only decision which went against them which was.

Morelos’ red card is so stonewall that any ref would have shown him the card. Their club didn’t even dispute it or appeal against it; indeed, the manager slammed him for it and dropped him from the game in midweek. That decision vindicates the sending off.

In all the back and forth over the refereeing performance there has been very little focus on the shocker of a decision not to award Hibs a penalty, and few are looking terribly hard at the one that Ibrox got at the other end.

So the whole week of sound and fury out of Ibrox is based on the Lundstram decision alone, and that was reversed on appeal, as it was always going to be with the smokescreen of the Doyle Hayes tackle and the whole of the press corps screaming to distract from the essential point of the decision.

It was a high challenge, from behind, which wasn’t remotely about winning the ball.

I’ve seen red cards given for that without all this bitching.

But the noise over it accomplished the goal it was supposed to; the ref today didn’t dare send off Sands, and so I expect that any decision in the immediate future of a similar nature will be hesitated over and ultimately bottled out of.

That was the plan. That was the intention. And for Ibrox, today shows that it was Mission: Accomplished.

They got off with that today because they’ve spent the past week castigating an official who just happens to work in a Catholic school … but others got the message regardless in the way the hacks turned on the guy.

We all talk about consistency; this, really, is the only consistency there is when it comes to Scottish football refereeing.

Decisions which go Celtic’s way are subjected to the most intense scrutiny and the only ones that match it are those against Sevco.