IT IS one of the eternal truths of football that, of the three separate teams on any football park at any one time, the team which makes the least number of mistakes - the refereeing team - gets the most criticism.
Just think about that for a moment; after any game, it is certain that the mistakes made by the players: failure to trap the proverbial bag of cement, mis-cued shots, misplaced passes, headers missed, will always greatly out-number the wrong decisions made by the referee and his assistants.
Take yesterday's SPL game between Dundee and Aberdeen at Dens, for instance. Let me say immediately, I have seen a lot of bad decisions made in my many years of watching and reporting on Scottish football. But quite how referee Alan Muir and his assistant referee on that line could EVER have decided that Lewis Toshney had brought down Peter Pawlett, God only knows.
Pawlett's "dive" might have been applauded for its technical perfection by the likes of Greg Luganis or Tom Daley, it ought to be roundly condemned by anyone involved in football.
Some might criticise Toshney for allowing himself to be conned, but the criticism should fall on Mr Muir and his team for a similar failing.
Just suppose Dundee bounce back to win all their remaining games and, when the final whistle is blown on season 2012-13, they are relegated by a single point - the two points which that single bad decision cost them will grate long in the psyche of all on the Dark Blue side of Dundee.
And, there is no come-back. The referee's decision is final, end of.
Now, here's a thought. FIFA will shortly allow TV replays to settle "was it a goal disputes" when there is doubt as to whether or not the ball crossed the line. This is the thin end of the wedge. Once the genie of TV replays is out of the bottle, we will soon, as in rugby and cricket have Television Match Officials involved.
We will then, just as surely, in time have tennis and cricket-style challenges to officials' decisions, rugby-style citing officers; retrospective changes to results and so on.
Just this week, Lynsey Sharp became European 800 metres Champion, after her Russian conqueror was unmasked as a drugs cheat, almost a year after the event. We have seen other athletics champions shamed as drugs cheats and medals re-distributed. This, of course, has not been done fairly - quite how my all-time favourite sportswoman, big Shazza Davies, has failed to have that magnificent bosum of hers covered in gold medals, which she was cheated out of by the institutionalised, serial doping policy of the old Communist East German state is a continuing stain on the people who run swimming.
But, what a can of worms this will open if it ever extends to football!!!!
I NOTE that Celtic were a wee bit miffed at the state of Ross county's Victoria Park at the weekend. The poor surface was used as just one of a string of excuses for yet another below-par display from the Champions.
Given the progress which has been made in recent years in synthetic or hybrid grass-synthetic pitches, I am continually amazed that the SPL management has not insisted on 3G or 4G pitches being standard. But hey, this is Scotland, one of the coldest, dampest, wettest places on earth, so, of course, we have to play on grass - even though better, more-modern surfaces, on which a real passing game could be fostered, are available.
But, perhaps not - a leap from the 19th to the 21st century, in one go, would be too-much for the Hampden blazers to cope with.
YOU would think a long-serving media specialist such as wee James Traynor would have been able to persuade the rest of the management team at Rangers that, banning a media outlet is never a good move. But, no, Ra Peepul carried-on and banned the BBC on the most-spurious of grounds.
The answer for the BBC is surely one which one of my old editors pulled after I upset one of the major teams within our circulation area. He simply stopped mentioning them. Two days later, everything was smoothed over and we were all friends again.
The question here is - could Chick Young go two days without saying the R word?
FINALLY - I have no inside knowledge of who Michale Higden allegedly assaulted, or why; but might suggest that a Scouser might well take umbrage at the prices which they charge at The Corinthian. Did he nut a barman perchance?
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