DOUGIEGATE, Collumgate, Cravengate, on and on the refereeing rumpuses rumble. If the mark of a good referee is that you never see them, then we've got some rank bad refs in Scotland right now.
Of course, the truth is, we've got some very good referees today, it's simply open season on them in the media. Given that the guys making the decisions on the tabloids' sports desks by and large have the attention span of a gnat, the hue and cry will die down and they'll move on to some other target.
Football has so changed in the last decade and a half as to bear only a passing resemblance to the game of even 30 years ago. As far as refereeing goes, let's be honest - the great referees of the past, such as Jack Mowat and Tiny Wharton would struggle today with the pace of the game and the fact, the respect for authority which gave them their right to control games is now gone from society.
And while we are getting torn into Scottish referees, if Mark Clattenburg's handling of the Nani goal for Manchester United v Spurs is any guide, let's have no repeat of the age-old call for English referees to be imported for the major Scottish games, particularly those between you know who.
I've said it before and doubtless will again - in over 40 years of covering over 50 sports - I've long ago come to the conclusion, English referees, like most English players are over-hyped and not as good as Scottish referees working at the same level.
About Nanigate: Clattenburg appears to have missed the hand-ball and was playing advantage to Spurs in the face of unsuccessful United penalty claims, when Gomez mucked-up and Nani took advantage.
If he had seen the hand-ball, but allowed Spurs to play-on, he could still have halted play and awarded Spurs the free kick, once Nani had taken advantage of the goalkeeper's blunder in not protecting the ball.
That's what would have happened in rugby; there, when the referee is playing advantage, he clearly signals such, BUT, if sufficient advantage does not accrue, he stops the game and restarts with the appropriate set-piece. There is no argument, other than that some rugby referees allow longer advantages than others, there is no set advantage time.
Nanigate and all the other 'gates mentioned above are further proof of what I've said in past posts here - we need a proper, thorough and wide-ranging updating of the Laws of the Game, to reflect the evolving face of football.
What we are getting is a lot of hurried changes to operating procedures, how the Laws of the Game are interpreted and so on, and as we are always being told: hurriedly-written law is generally bad law.
Run it through IFAB, take your time and get it right, please.
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