Another Keith Jackson Shocker, But Does This One Hide A Darker Intent?

I wasn’t going to Jackson today when I saw that he was doing Willie Collum. But something about it nagged me. It nagged me until I went back for a second look, and I actually got it right away. I should have got it the first time, but I was still half asleep when I read him.

So, I’m going to do Jackson after all. Before I get to the point, I’m going to do the straightforward review of what he wrote … and then I’ll tackle what he was saying.

Willie Collum must confront the C word to fix VAR in Scottish football and ditch textbook gobbledygook – Keith Jackson

When I read that headline at first, I thought it just sounded clunky. Now I know that it’s not. I’ll get back to that headline at the end. Because that headline is important. The sub-headline is less controversial, but the message has already been sent.

The former ref is getting to work in sorting the problems with the technology

The technology has never been the problem. But he’s drilling the refs as well, and that might mean that things will improve a bit. Now for the body of the article …

Who knew all this time the salvation of Scottish football would come in the shape of a smaller than average Willie? And not just any wee Willie either. But the OG Wee Willie.

Good God. Is this really how we’re starting a piece about an important subject, and a guy trying to bring in some much needed reform? Dick jokes? Are we behind the bike sheds here? Is Jackson trying to tell us something? Other than that he’s a clown? That paragraph is important for another reason, which I’ll get to.

As the SFA’s newly-appointed head of referees, Willie Collum has jumped from the frying pan straight into the fire and the former match official was pushed out front and centre over the weekend, launching an attempted charm offensive ahead of the upcoming campaign. it’s fair to say Collum doesn’t always help himself in that regard.

The purpose of it was to inform people. Not to charm them. What does he need to go on a “charm offensive” for?

He’s just started in the job. Who exactly should he be trying to charm? I don’t want some flash git trying to ingratiate himself to the media. That post badly needed someone who knew and understood the job … and why people are so pissed off with officials.

It’s not easy to humanise an individual who, by his very nature, is just not like other people. Let’s face it, there is something different about referees – it’s what makes them want to pick up a whistle in the first place – and that’s a tricky starting point when trying to come across as a man of the people. Often, it manifests in a tendency to come across as a little too tightly strung and occasionally the men in black can veer towards being downright condescending.

Who the Hell needs to humanise him? We’ve gone from dick jokes to this?

To branding all referees as being slightly weird? Why does this paper continue employing this idiot?

These very traits might make it hard to warm to Wee Willie but, even so, let’s cut the guy a bit of slack now that he’s been charged with fixing all the wrongs which made so much of last season an insufferable, exasperating watch. Collum was at the centre of much of the controversy while carrying out his old day job, either in the middle of the pitch or from inside the VAR bunker at Clydesdale House.

Any decisions in particular which frustrated you Keithy?

The unfathomable confusion surrounding the hand ball rule wasn’t his doing – that was down to the lack of clear advice coming from his predecessor Crawford Allan – but Collum was one of the unfortunates who had to front it up on a weekly basis.

Aah so this is about the “handball rule” eah?

As in “why didn’t my favourite team get a penalty for the “handball” involving Alastair Johnston?

Two reasons; first, it didn’t meet the criteria for awarding one, and secondly the officials had deemed there was an offside already. It doesn’t matter how many times the hacks try to turn this into Watergate. It wasn’t.

There was no conspiracy. Just a bunch of whingeing Sevconians who won’t accept the facts.

So it’s little wonder then that, at the top of his to-do list on behalf of his former colleagues, he aims to simplify this particular conundrum and make it a great deal easier for officials, players, managers and fans to get their heads around. If Collum can sort this mess out then he’ll be doing a great service to the game in this country so, in the meantime, it’s incumbent upon the rest of us to wish him well and to hope he really does know what he’s talking about after all.

Agree for once. But this is the first time I’ve seen someone being wished well in an article that starts giving him a disparaging nickname and then calling him weird.

Even if, despite himself, it doesn’t always sound like it. During his many media duties over Friday and Saturday, Collum coined the phrase – and referred frequently – to something he called ‘football expectation’.

Keith Jackson. Slagging someone for the words he uses. We are through the Looking Glass people, where white is black and black is white.

When asked what exactly he meant by it he said: “I don’t want it just to be words that don’t mean anything.” To the layman, it all sounded suspiciously like convoluted jargon straight from some powerpoint presentation.

Everything Collum said was perfectly easy to understand for those of us who possess basic comprehension skills.

These weren’t interviews conducted in code, although some of this article is … I’ll get to it don’t worry.

And God knows Scottish football has had quite enough of that textbook gobbledygook over these past few years. The key words Collum really should concentrate on are ‘clarity’ and ‘consistency’ as that’s what he’ll need to deliver from behind his new desk.

In all the years I’ve been doing this, and that’s more than ten now, this is the first time I’ve ever heard someone suggest that the problem with refereeing in this country comes down to officials and their use of “textbook gobbledygook.” I agree on clarity and consistency. These are exactly the things Collum spent those two days talking about.

If he can ensure the rules are streamlined, made more clear and concise and, even more crucially, that they are applied across the board on a consistent basis then Collum will have ridden to the rescue of our national sport in a time of need. He must also attempt to connect with fans all across the country and provide them with more of a common sense approach to the decision making which has had such a negative impact on their enjoyment of the product.

See, this is where people like Jackson lose me on this.

He talks about applying the rules consistently and across the boards and then talks about a “common sense approach.” Which undercuts what he just said. Because in the context of this situation a “common sense approach” is a euphemism for ignoring certain rules because they are perceived as being “stupid” or “un-necessary.” Let me give you the obvious example; booking players who leave the field to celebrating scoring a goal.

That rule needs consistency brought to it. The “common sense” approach seems to be that you book Celtic players but that Ibrox players can do it whenever they want. Either make the rule uniform, across the boards, as Jackson says, or scrap it entirely. No more “common sense” interpretations. The rule is crap. I hate it. Most people do. But as long as it’s in the book then it ought to bloody well be enforced absolutely without exception.

Lately it feels as if Scottish football has been leading the way in being ‘user unfriendly’ and it’s now Collum’s responsibility to help nip this trend in the bud. It must never be forgotten, in all of this, that these are the very people who pay through the nose to watch it.

Is it just me who thinks his use of the term “user friendly” here sounds like “textbook gobbledygook” or perhaps “convoluted jargon straight from a powerpoint presentation”? And who are the “they” in that paragraph? Did he skip over some sentences here?

The game simply cannot afford to risk pushing their patience beyond its limits as it has been doing over these last 18 months.

I presume the “they” are the fans. And the day that the “game” gives a toss about them will be a cold one in Hell. We don’t even have minimum away allocation guarantees and they are common in every country in the game. Fans want consistent decision making that doesn’t insult our intelligence. We want transparency … and accountability.

Collum needs to be careful in the way he goes about doing that too because it would be a serious misstep if the paying public was left to feel as if he was talking down to them or adopting a sanctimonious tone.

Not one single person I have spoken to feels that way. God forbid that someone who is supposed to know what he’s talking about actually sounds as if he knows what he’s talking about. If Collum sounds like he’s trying to walk us through the ABC’s it’s because rules have been changed and twisted and interpreted so much that some of us feel like we need that.

He was in danger of straying there over the weekend when he repeatedly used the phrase, ‘what people need to understand,’ as if the onus is somehow on all of the rest of us to be better and brighter.

Again, this is nonsense. Jackson is nit-picking here.

Of course, it may have been nothing more than a clumsy choice of words but even so Collum needs to be a lot less school teachery if he wants to get his message across to the masses.

Scottish football needs people who can communicate this stuff clearly. Collum is a teacher. We might as we well get the best out of that. Just because some people didn’t get a formal education is no reason to deprive the rest of us of someone who knows his stuff. There’s an interesting word at the end of that paragraph which I’m going to come back to.

He can’t allow himself to resort to blaming the supporters rather than accepting that the fault lies squarely with those in charge of writing and administering a rulebook which is becoming increasingly impossible for them to comprehend. At least Collum has admitted as much while insisting also he and his own officials must raise their collective game going forward.

Where is he blaming the supporters? I’ll tell you who he should be blaming; the media. Which focuses on some controversies and ignores others. Where you have people explaining why Connor Goldson is allowed to play netball whilst trying to get Alastair Johnston raked over the coals for one that wasn’t a penalty but was offside anyway. Besides, how can this joker claim that the rulebook is “impossible to comprehend” and then slag Collum for daring to try and explain it?

But along with improving clarity and increasing consistency there’s a third ‘C’ word which Collum will have to confront and that’s all to do with communication when it comes to keeping the paying punter in the loop.

There’s that “C word” reference again. Like I said, we’ll get there at the end. But yeah, communication is important, and that’s why at the end of this article I’m going to very clearly communicate what I think is really going on here.

Collum says his top referees have been cramming in hours of work at Clydesdale House over the last couple of weeks as they prepare for another campaign in the VAR hotseat and it’s certainly encouraging to know they’ve been taking their pre-season seriously.

About time too.

But it’s also heartening to hear Collum personally endorsing a plan for refs to talk directly to supporters whenever the use of the pitch-side monitor is required because that’s the very least they deserve.

Yeah and I know for a fact that he’s done that in the face of serious opposition in his own house.

It’s ludicrous that up until now they have been left completely in the dark, without any way of knowing why match-changing decisions are being made by a few men looking at a little screen. No other business worthy of the name would treat its own customers with such outrageous contempt.

Except for the one at Ibrox. And the mainstream media.

And if Wee Willie really is serious about addressing this anomaly then he might just be the man Scottish football didn’t even know it needed.

Yeah, close with another dick joke you clown, because that shows how seriously you take this.

I said I was going to talk about what this article is actually about and so here I’m going to make it clear. Before I do let me give you a bit of background.

One of the most interesting lessons in communications I ever got was from the late, great Henry McLeish, who was running one of the rapid rebuttal operations at Scottish Labour HQ in 1997. He was the first guy who ever clued me in as to how to do a close-read of a newspaper report, and to see what’s under the surface of it.

Every now and again – not often, but every now and again – a report is not as straightforward as it seems, but is filled with little nods and winks to the wise.

And I missed that at first, but on a second reading – once I knew what to look for – I spotted those little nods and winks, and hints. You don’t even need media training to be able to spot it. Read that headline again; “Willie Collum must confront the C word to fix VAR in Scottish football and ditch textbook gobbledygook – Keith Jackson.”

You see, it right? The C word?

Why phrase it like that? Communication, clarity and consistency … you could have refer to them as the “three C’s” but The Record chose not to do that, it chose to refer to “the C word”.

And what possible C Word comes to mind when a certain group of Peepul think of Willie Collum?

And that first paragraph, and the word “salvation” … come on. “Sanctimonious” … Yeah?

That’s not even subtle; think about it in that context and read that headline again and it JUMPS off the page at you, right?

That’s disgusting, that’s a high-pitched dog whistle, just at the level where most people won’t hear it … but it’s still there, it’s still audible if you have the ears for it.

The whole article is nothing but rambling designed to hide the fact that they’re trying to draw attention to Collum’s job and his religious affiliations.

It’s not for nothing that they talk about “the C word” and toss in that throwaway line about his being a schoolteacher and “getting the message across to the masses” … a poor choice of words, or exactly what they were going for? The word “salvation” suggests so.

Hell, they might as well have started the last word with a capital letter and just made it plain for anyone who missed it.

I think they’ve done a little bit of dredging the gutter here, and everyone involved at that paper should be ashamed to be associated with this kind of stuff.