To Those Going Crazy Over Refs, The Celtic Fans Welcome You To The Reform Camp.

The sound of whingeing and wailing, which was already filling the airwaves yesterday, went up a notch today, as I knew it would the second the ref flashed the red card at the first Hearts player. We were 1-0 up. It was late in the match.

When the second came out I swear I held the audible collective howl of outrage from much of Scotland, that part that always tells us we’re paranoid, that there’s no such thing as a bent ref, that they don’t succumb to pressure from the stands.

Then, after the game, the ever dependable Robbie Neilson said just that.

This is the guy whose side has never actually lost to us because we’re a better team but because of some confluence of events which conspired against him. A poor free kick decision in the first minute that led to a goal in the 92nd; that’s the logic of this guy’s constant moaning in the media.

I thought his comments in the aftermath of the game today were mind-bendingly bizarre. He wants the yellow card count to reflect the foul count? Really? I would give that experiment a fortnight before he was screaming about how unjust it is. His players are reckless thugs at times. Whoever was interviewing him should have asked him two interlocking questions;

First, which of the fouls that Celtic committed deserved a yellow card, and secondly, which of the yellow cards his own team got does he think didn’t deserve to be? His answers would be fascinating, if he gave an honest accounting of things.

Both of the early bookings for the Hearts pair are deserved. If you are still lunging about and pushing players when your side is chasing an equaliser late in the game although you’re already on a booking then that’s on you, and a little introspection is in order.

All four fouls are yellows. Two yellows means red. This is simple arithmetic which a child could do. The ref wasn’t influenced by the crowd in the least. His linesman, who I thought had a thoroughly wretched afternoon, certainly weren’t.

The Ibrox illiterati have jumped all over the “foul to card ratio” stats; another group who would dump this mad idea in a week if it was actually applied, and they would howl with even greater rage than they do right now.

They will be moon-howling about Collum for weeks to come. He deserves it too. He gives one penalty but not another. I think he gets both red cards right, but if you wanted to debate the Lundstram one you could probably do it … still, I think he’s a terrible official and I personally wouldn’t want him near any of our games.

Once again though, the whole country is focussed on the whistlers and once again it’s because a couple of decisions are seen to have gone against them in the same weekend as some calls seem to have favoured us. It doesn’t matter that this is built on a shoddy foundation – Hibs should have had a stonewall penalty and Morelos definitely deserved to walk and the red cards Hearts got today only a moron (Robbie Neilson) would complain about.

But let’s have the chat then. Motherwell got a penalty this weekend for a handball that never was; the ball clearly drifts by his hand. Ross County could have two straight reds against Kilmarnock; as it turns out, one of their players got himself sent off anyway. He will miss – irony of ironies – the game against the Ibrox club at the weekend.

If people want the debate – the serious debate – over just how bad our referees are, I know that Celtic fans have waited a long time to join it.

So if the media wants to get real and lay it all out then we’re in, we’re up for it, and we’ll support the answer whether its making refs declare allegiances, making them declare – ahem – social memberships, grading them properly and punishing those who egregiously screw up or bringing in refs from other countries to take our big matches … count us in, we’ll back it.

But see, I rather suspect that none of that is on the agenda, or being proposed. It never has been before when we’ve wanted to discuss it. It’s only when decisions go our way and the media starts hollering, or when they go against Ibrox and their fans revert to batshit type.

Nobody, though, at any time, can say that our fans are satisfied with things the way they are. Nobody can say that we are the ones protecting the system, because we’re not. We want it torn down. We want it reformed root and branch and always have.

If refereeing in this country is a mess – which it is and we all know that it is – the only people I know who aren’t to blame for that are us. If those who cover our game, and some of those who work in it, finally want to join us in the reform camp, well their help and support will be as welcome as it is overdue. But we were here first.