What cannot be allowed to happen in Scottish football

Since their formation in 2012, theRangers have done everything possible to link themselves to the original 1872 club. The refereeing arguments of the past few days feel like a reversion to the earliest days of football in Scotland.

The organisation and work of referees in the first few years of the Scottish League is especially different from now. And sometimes it even involved Celtic and Rangers being seen to help each other!

A Scottish Football League first took place in season 1890-91. Until then, the footballing calendar was dominated by friendlies and various local and national cup contests. In the 1890s, there was no central list of independent referees. Instead, teams would provide linesmen for their own matches and referees for other games.

For example, if Celtic played Hearts, the two linesmen (sometimes called umpires or touch judges) would come from Hearts and Celtic, whilst the referee might be provided by St Mirren. This situation did not lead to clubs accepting the decisions of the match officials; quite the opposite, in fact.

After games, clubs would lodge protests against decisions to try and have matches replayed.

In Celtic’s first title-winning season (1892-93), there were complaints of Rangers being given unfair assistance. And both times, it was a Celtic referee accused of helping them! Sometimes, the results of matches would end up being overturned.

Clubs would claim goals were offside or otherwise wrong, and the game would have to be replayed. Without TV evidence, it’s not clear how such decisions could be made. Although the current Rangers may well be hoping for similar action!

On occasion, there were even more brutal responses to refereeing decisions. Games had to be abandoned as angry fans would rush onto the pitch to attack players or referees with which they disagreed. Often these fixtures ended up being replayed, rather than the guilty team being punished.

Whether it’s in the 1890s or nowadays, referees are always a controversial topic, so here’s an opinion guaranteed to annoy, well, everybody.

The fact that so many fans (of all clubs) can complain about officials in most games likely means there’s no organised refereeing conspiracy. This is neither pro-Celtic, pro-Rangers or, for fans of other clubs, pro-‘Old Firm’.

This is not to say that some level of subconscious bias may not play a role. This could be influenced by crowds or historic connections with clubs. Instead the reality is that referees make mistakes, and that’s for every team. And also in every country, not just Scotland.

But confirmation bias plays a role in fan interpretations. This means that people tend to remember evidence which favours their opinion (a conspiracy against their team) whilst ignoring all contrary data.

Thus, theRangers complaining about correct decisions on Saturday (their penalty could not under any circumstances have been given) falls down when they don’t protest multiple decisions in their favour, including repeated handballs in the VAR era. Or indeed choose to ignore a very positive penalty and red card differential since they entered Scotland’s top league in 2016.

What cannot be allowed to happen is that clubs – or one in particular – can dictate the officials that control their matches. Concerns about the impartiality of officials eventually ended the practice of clubs doing this. Instead, independent referees were provided by the SFA oversaw matches.

Still, it seems some clubs want to go back in time. Except on this occasion, theRangers want to again provide (or at least choose) the officials for their games.

Matthew Marr