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This moment was inevitable. One when observers from Gorgie to Guadalajara ponder how Scottish football got itself into such a tangle with the video assistant referee system. Sadly for Hearts, the incident in question may prove fatal in their push to make history. Sadly for Celtic, it will be a key reference point in the event of a successful title defence.
Gary Lineker played for Tottenham in a 1-1 draw at Tynecastle in 1990, that has never appeared to fuel a lasting affection for Hearts. Lineker is untainted by the Old Firm’s suffocating tribalism. He passed the neutrality test with flying colours. Lineker used social media to amplify the cries of disgust as Celtic were awarded a late, late penalty to win at Motherwell. “This might be the worst VAR decision I’ve seen (and there’s a lot of competition),” Lineker said. “Extraordinary given the significance.”
Motherwell’s Sam Nicholson leaped for the ball alongside Auston Trusty. Nicholson’s elbow was catapulted upwards by Trusty’s shoulder. Unless Nicholson has the physical attributes of Inspector Gadget, he headed the ball clear. The likelihood (only that) is the ball touched his hand, sufficiently so for Scotland’s dedicated VAR, Andrew Dallas, to alert the match referee. John Beaton took only a brief look at the scene – amazingly, given its complexity – before pointing to the spot. Lineker’s sentiment was matched, en masse, by those who found it extraordinary the VAR felt the need to intervene.
The follow-up was typical. Celtic supporters, who would endanger the functionality of the internet were a penalty given against their side in an identical situation, have contorted themselves to deliver all manner of arguments on why the call was correct. Others, including Lineker, with no horse in the race have highlighted the lunacy of it. This was no place for the VAR to press pause on a moment that, despite this age of the internet, would have received no subsequent attention had it been ignored.
The latest bulletin from the Scottish Professional Football League’s Pinocchio department landed on Wednesday. “SPFL top-flight attendances set to pass four million for first time amid thrilling title race,” it read. Attendance: the persons or number of persons present. Anyone with eyes in their head would be well aware there were not, in fact, the reported 18,113 at Celtic’s recent visit to Hibernian. There are further examples but the SPFL uses ticket sales rather than keisters on seats as a means of demonstrating this is the league for the match-attending supporter. It is all about those fans in Scotland, as evidenced during toe-curling appeals to open turnstiles as Covid gripped the world.
Except it really is not. The implementation of VAR, which has fundamentally undermined the SPFL matchgoing experience, was done without consulting supporters. There is no sense of clubs asking season-ticket holders if they are happy to continue to subsidise a system that prompts confusion in stands and spreads a small pool of elite officials so desperately thin.
Fir Park on Wednesday evening should prove a watershed moment for VAR in Scottish football, the trigger for a broad realisation that the game must extricate itself from the system as soon as is feasible. This was far from the only episode of erroneous intervention in Scotland this season but it will surely remain the most high-profile by a considerable margin.
The Foundation of Hearts, the majority shareholder in the club, issued a statement on Thursday questioning recent officiating. “We have been extremely concerned by a number of refereeing and VAR decisions across the last two rounds of fixtures, which have had a significant impact on outcomes for Hearts and others,” it said. What an opportunity for FoH to lead the way in pursuing an end to the VAR farce.
In February, Celtic’s manager Martin O’Neill perfectly articulated the mess. “It is such a nonsense,” he said. “I am all for people that missed something dramatic in a game, that constitutes something they should have a look at. But when a referee sees the incident himself, then what he is being asked to do is: ‘No, you didn’t see that. You saw something else.’ That has got to be debilitating for a referee. It has got to be.
“ If VAR has spotted some things that are blatant, two boys having a fight in the corner or something and it’s missed, I can understand that.”
Nicholson and Trusty was not remotely “dramatic”. It was a routine aerial joust. With the VAR comes a natural comparison of tariffs for VAR involvement, which fluctuate wildly from week to week. Celtic benefited this time; in future they will suffer and the noise will be identical. Scotland’s VAR use is not worth adjacent and deafening aggravation.
There will be no Scottish match officials at the World Cup this summer. A glance at the countries represented says it all about the lowly standing of those working in the SPFL. Willie Collum, Scotland’s head of refereeing, was once a colleague of those he now presides over, and was therefore a lazy appointment by a national association that routinely bridles against external scrutiny. Collum is in the invidious position of constantly having to defend underperforming referees. Scotland has no officials operating in the highest circles even with VAR on the domestic front, which removes one cause for using it. The Championship in England is a perfectly serious league while functioning without video assistant referees.
In Scotland, the environment was febrile enough without VAR and the associated toxic fallout. Given the pounds-as-prisoners element even in much of the Premiership, it remains curious those in boardrooms have not made noises about withdrawal of hefty funding. There are some who believe it would be a backward step or a sign of weakness to end the project. Instead, if done in conjunction with messaging that supporters have to be more accepting of human error in exchange for an authentic Saturday afternoon, it would be a nod to clubs understanding their customers rather than treating them as a cash machine.
The champions of Scotland will deserve their title, whether that is Celtic or Hearts when the final whistle blows in Glasgow on Saturday. It is just that the stench of controversy and lingering ill-feeling will be difficult to remove. Scottish football must realise it does not have to be this way.
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