The Referees Statement Yesterday Was Damning. Scottish Football Is Already In The Next Crisis.

Yesterday, Scottish referees released a statement following the weekend’s meeting with the SFA and I thought that even in pulling their punches they managed to say everything they needed to. It was damning.

They have demanded more protection and intimated that the governing bodies are not even willing to offer them the minimum of it which they feel they need.

There will almost certainly be no punishment handed out to Ibrox for its shocking behaviour since the start of the month, and I have no doubt refs asked for a punishment and have been shamefully let down.

The SFA is not prepared to take a stand.

You know what I think?

I think the SFA and the SPFL telegraphed their intentions on this front over the last few days when they helped the Ibrox club negotiate a concession on PPV games out of Sky. What was the public interest in putting that story in the public domain in the way they did it? It was a gesture to the Ibrox club and its fans from the governing bodies saying “Look! We’re partners after all!”

And you know, Ibrox will view that as contemptuously as I do.

Because appeasing these Peepul has been the standard since 2012 and as I wrote at length last week, it is a policy which has proved to be disastrous. This time it’s been done at the expense of the officials, and Ibrox will only feel emboldened to act against them again at the time of their choosing in the knowledge that nothing will be done about it.

At the same time, tonight you have Keith Jackson writing that the SPFL could yet intercede to force Celtic to give them tickets to our ground even if there’s no movement on the issues that matter to us in the long-running saga of the away fan allocations. That’s another message to get the Ibrox club and fans onside, another olive branch nod and wink to the wise.

So to me, it’s no wonder the refs feel completely abandoned and that, of course, will have consequences for the whole of the game. Not that they’ve done themselves any favours by tying this situation to demands for more money, which is both tactically and strategically stupid whilst they continue to insist on the protection of total secrecy around decision making.

These people are so badly advised. They took the threat of a strike off the table way too early in the day too, but that could just be that as I said before nobody at either Hampden or Ibrox wants this to escalate to a point beyond which anything might have to change.

Which is why everything has to change.

The whole culture at the SFA needs swamping out.

The leadership is a joke. Gutless, without vision and content to rule over a kingdom of ashes; these have to be the most pitiful “governors” of football in Europe.

But I think this time most of us expected there to be something. A player or a manager would be severely sanctioned if he questioned even the wisdom of a poor decision, and this club created an entire fortnight of sound and fury to target one guy and they weren’t even questioning his skillset, they were outright accusing him of cheating.

There is no way they should have gotten away with that, but when you read that referees statement it is clear that they have. Our game is on the brink of anarchy here. Ibrox continues to push as far as it thinks it can get away with, and its leaders meet no resistance at all. So they have no disincentive to push further next time.

So, this is not even the end of one crisis, this is the start of the next one.

And all the while, the fourth estate says nothing that will get them on the wrong side of the Peepul.

This is when a healthy media should be screaming at the SFA and the SPFL to act … that they aren’t is exactly why the conditions for anarchy exist and have multiplied in the past few years.