SPFL

I think it’s an undeniable fact that the standard of refereeing in Scotland has diminished as the years have gone on. I believe there is one distinct reason for this, Scotland has too many “Category 1” referees in comparison to other bigger countries, now Scotland’s structure of referee development is much different to other countries, however even then these following numbers are alarming in my opinion. The SFA has around 80 referees in their “Category 1 pool” considering we only have 42 clubs in our professional league set-up, this seems rather excessive. When you compare the “Category 1” or ”elite level” referee pools in England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy they all clock in at a more reasonable 20-25 top level whistlers. This to me is a clear indication that the SFA has favoured a “quantity over quality” perspective and have ended up placing guys into situations they are not ready for, and the implementation of VAR has only made things more complicated. I was recently at Easter Road for Hibernian’s game against Livingston, where I witnessed one of the worst penalty calls I’ve ever seen when Mo Sylla quite clearly wins the ball from a challenge on Martin Boyle however referee Lloyd Wilson decides to point to the spot. It took the intervention of VAR to come to the correct outcome, however the initial decision was so poor, questions must be asked as to how he decided to call for a penalty.  Wilson is currently in his first season refereeing in the Scottish Premiership and without VAR he could have cost relegation threatened Livingston a much valuable point at a difficult away venue. It’s not just the younger, less experienced referees that are making these decisions, you have to look back no further than last Sunday when Livingston were again involved against Edinburgh opposition, this time Hearts at The Home of the Set Fare Arena where in the dying moments of the game Robbie Muirhead is clearly pulled down by Marc Leonard with no cover whatsoever. However, referee Kevin Clancy only gave a yellow card to the Hearts midfielder, again until VAR was able to bring the on-field official to the clear correct decision. Kevin Clancy made his Premiership debut in April 2012 meaning he’s been one of Scotland’s top flight officials for 14 years, yet somehow still needing the usage of the technology to find the correct decision that people in the stands and watching on TV at home can clearly see. The SFA must change the way they promote referees if they are to fix these issues, the “Category 1” pool is overcrowded with newly promoted and older headed referees who are not up to the task of refereeing at the top level. Just take the involvement of Scottish referees at international level as more evidence of this, throughout the 1990s and 2000s, referees such as Hugh Dallas, Craig Thomson and even the now head of SFA referees Willie Collum regularly officiated in the Champions League and major international competitions. However by 2020 Scotland had zero referees on UEFA’s Elite list, Nick Walsh was promoted to that list in 2025, and was the first in 13 years. Moving to VAR, I think I’m probably in the minority when I say I’m generally supportive of the implementation of VAR. Without it around 90% of the on-field decisions alone are correct, however with the technology that number goes up to 97.8% and I think with every correct decision that VAR makes, is a reason for it to be kept. Saying that, I think there’s a couple of things that could make it even better, because really when you have the luxury of watching a certain incident over and over again as much as you like, not having 100% correct decisions shows a still flawed system. I won’t explain one specific example because frankly there are too many that affect every Premiership club, but how many times have we seen the VAR team trying to draw lines to determine an offside decision and the camera angle is not in the correct position to see the players affecting the decision. It’s off to the side, at a dodgy angle and there’s a third player blocking the view of the camera to the players involved, and in one instance I remember a certain Motherwell vs Celtic game where they are trying to determine an offside from a camera on the whole other side of the pitch from the play. Simply put we need more cameras installed in stadiums to help the VAR officials with their decision making, but it’s not just offside decisions there’s other situations this could be useful. During the Scottish cup tie between Aberdeen and Motherwell where Liam Gordon was sent off for the Steelmen for denying a goal scoring opportunity in the centre circle with many teammates around him, John Beaton was then sent to the monitor to check his decision. They proceeded to show Beaton a replay of the incident from behind the goal at the beach end at Pittodrie which gave no context to the play and how close the other Motherwell players were to the play and therefore Beaton kept his original and wrong decision. It’s my opinion that if the camera angle wasn’t, as Scotland International John McGinn said on X: “From the north sea” John Beaton would have been better placed to change his mind. Again simply put, Scotland needs to put more money into VAR to help referees who clearly aren’t up to standard and until these differences are implemented, refereeing in Scotland will continue to decline.