CELTIC have come in for criticism for their seemingly petulant letter fired off to the SFA after Sunday’s Scottish Cup semi-final defeat to Inverness Caledonian Thistle.
The missive, regarding Josh Meekings’ unpunished handball, sought “simply to understand the circumstances of what went on and why such an obvious error was made”.
While it might sound like the actions of a sore loser, you can understand why the club feel aggrieved. Had the handball been dealt with at the time, Celtic were facing playing against 10 men, more than likely two goals to the good.
Nor is it just a cup final place that has gone but a shot at the treble, something so rare it has only been achieved three times in the club’s history.
So while a letter may seem intemperate, this isn’t about Celtic believing they have a divine right to win as some have claimed; it’s about highlighting poor officiating and holding those responsible to account.
No one (bar, perhaps, conspiracists with risible theories of masonic refereeing plots) wants the game replayed. The game is done and dusted.
Nor should Meekings have missed out on a historic day for club and player and will fortunately now be available for the final.
The defender committed the infringement, but punishing him for someone else’s mistake wouldn’t have affected the outcome of a game that has already been played.
The letter from Celtic is just a simple, effective way of focusing attention on the quality of officiating in Scotland.
Highlighting refereeing standards in this way rather than ‘grinning and bearing it’ will improve the game, not just benefit one club.
Every team has suffered from wrong refereeing decisions of varying degrees of import – and will do again unless more is done to highlight officials’ errors and poor performances.
Hearts, for example, suffered when Celtic were awarded a soft penalty by Willie Collum in the Scottish Cup earlier this season.
The same official denied Aberdeen a legitimate goal and waved away what should have been a Dons penalty in their 3-0 Premiership win at Hamilton in February. Luckily for Aberdeen the errors didn’t affect the outcome of the game.
That’s not to say refereeing is easy or the SFA isn’t trying to improve the standards of refereeing. But no one gets better at their job if their errors are treated with apathy.
FIFA’s referee chief Jim Boyce commendably criticised the SFA for initially handing Meekings a retrospective ban. Boyce though is also an advocate of technology being used to assist referees, so clubs highlighting such poor decisions as Sunday’s can help support the argument in favour of technology, which would make the officials’ jobs easier and result in less controversies.
“I believe that if there are major decisions on incidents in the 18-yard box and technology is available then … it should be used,” said Boyce in February. “So many high-profile mistakes appear to be being made, so maybe we do have to look at this now.”
It’s easy to say what goes around comes around and these things even themselves out over the season; that Celtic are now suffering a similar injustice to that which befell Hearts in the fourth round.
But it’s a disingenuous view – there is no football god meting out karma equally over the season. I would much rather Celtic won and lost games on their own strengths and failings than at the mercy of an official’s mistake.
We lambast players for missing open goals or getting sent off. Their confidence is knocked, they may be dropped, while their clubs may miss out on silverware or suffer relegation.
Poor officiating can have the same consequences for clubs but without the same level of accountability for those responsible.
No one remembers the name of the referee who denied you a penalty the way they remember the name of a player who misses the decisive spot kick in a shootout.
There should be more accountability among officials, but they need to improve – or have the correct tools to assist them to do the job properly – to stop such controversies happening in the first place.
The SFA effectively admitted their officials erred by originally charging Meekings. Yet Sunday’s referee Steven McLean and additional assistant referee Alan Muir are scheduled to officiate this weekend as normal.
Meanwhile Celtic must put their treble hopes away for another year, while Meekings almost missed out on the biggest day of his career so far.
Surely highlighting such errors and their repercussions for clubs and players is worth the price of a stamp?
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