Let It Be True

REFEREES have long been the true, largely unsung heroes of Scottish football.

OK, even at boys club and pub league level, they get paid, but I've always felt a large proportion of their match fees is danger money. Their parentage, eyesight, intelligence, neutrality and judgement is questioned minute by minute during games, and while players who struggle to trap a bag of cement and couldn't find a team mate, unmarked ten yards away with the ball get a relatively free ride from the critics in the stand, woe betide the referee who is even marginally out in his calls.

I wouldn't do it, so I admire guys like Hugh Dallas, who not only did it very well but encouraged his son Andrew - who just might be as good as his dad - to take up the profession as well.

"Mr Bonkle from Dallas", as the late Tommy Burns was want to call him, was in the news this morning, in his role as the SFA's Referee Development Officer, for telling his men to not be afraid to give penalties for shirt-pulling.

Well said Hughie, but, a bit late.

To show he is serious about this, Hugh has also told representatives of Scotland's 42 senior clubs that the shirt-pulling penalties are coming. Just wait for the explosion the first time Dougie McDonald penalises Scott Brown at Parkhead or Davie Weir at Ibrox.

I've long felt football would benefit from a short, sharp spell of zero tolerance, rigorously enforced by referees. Sure, there would be a week or two of matches finishing up as seven-a-side, there would be blood on the carpets inside Hampden's corridors of power, but, in the end, the game would benefit immensely from a bit more discipline.

During the World Cup, one of the perennial comments from the British TV commentators and analysts was: "That wouldn't be a free kick in the Premiership", and that's one reason why British teams too-often fail in Europe.

We've got this old-fashioned ethos of "football is a man's game", we allow over-aggressive tackling, which is alien to the rest of the world. British players have always got stuck in when it comes to tackling and Europe's response to this was the dying swan act - "Hamlet" Haller of the 1966 German team begat Jurgen Klinsman and Lother Mattheus in one country, Maradona gave acting lessons in another as the problem worsened.

The old-fashioned clean, ball-winning Scottish tackle: Tam Forsyth on Mike Channon for instance, is one of football's great sights; but, thanks to the tackled player of today's penchant for the flying two and a half piked somersault with one and a half twists response to a good, fair tackle, it is hardly seen.

Clamp down on jersey-pulling, time-wasting, simulation, stealing yards at free kicks and throw-ins, placing the ball outside the arc for corner flags, rolling over after tackles, inviting the referee to book an opponent. There might be a few weeks of mayhem, but, if the referees stick to their guns and are consistent - every referee singing from the same hymn sheet, we would have a much better game.

I live in hope.

But, I'm not holding my breath.

Some years ago I watched an Under-15 inter-area game in which a wee ginger-headed midfielder from one of the sides questioned every decision by the referee and was screaming for his opponent - who was being out-played in the skills stakes but stuck to his marking task manfully and tackled fairly but with gusto - to be booked after every challenge.

Eventually, the referee had to hand out a stern lecture to the ginger whinger, whose response was a classic exhibition of not-so-dumb insolence.

I told his coach: "If you were any good as a man manager, you'd drag him off now and sub him as a lesson in manners", my observation was met with disdain and disapproval. In fact the teacher encouraged him to continue to moan and misbehave.

And that folks helps to explain how Mickey Stewart became the man he is today.

That same coach, by the way, has a nice wee earner as a scout for an SPL club.

Another of my old school team mates took up refereeing and, while he never made Grade One, he had a long career in the middle. But, he gave up in disgust when he had to start dishing-out red cards in the Under-13 leagues to boys who simply had no self-discipline and weren't getting any from indulgent team managers.

"When teenaged boys are being encouraged by their team managers to lie, cheat, question decisions, be cheeky to referees and not accept rulings, I'm out and that day has come", he told me. So Scottish football lost another unsung hero.

That referee, by the way, had played for Scotland Schools at Wembley - he knew the game and he cared.