Willie Collum’s monthly meander through the good, the bad and the ugly of VAR on the Scottish FA’s YouTube channel rarely creates the stir it used to in its inceptual phase.
It sometimes feels like it sits there in a relatively quiet corner of the interweb, a haven now for little other than nerds and anoraks and those still searching for evidence of secret-society conspiracies and rolled-up trouserlegs among the refereeing fraternity.
And that’s a shame, because, for all the issues there have been with the implementation of video technology in the Premiership, it remains a most educational watch. On Friday evening, it certainly taught Hearts a few lessons – and resulted in the kind of quiet but assertive telling-off Collum might once have used in his days as a secondary schoolteacher for those caught with a quarter-bottle of the bionic tonic behind the bikesheds.
Lord knows what they must have been drinking at Tynecastle over the past week — paraffin, by the looks of it — but they’ve certainly succeeded in making absolute clowns of themselves over the on-field decisions that contributed to a catastrophic campaign hitting the buffers completely in a Scottish Cup last-four loss to Aberdeen and paved the way for head coach Neil Critchley’s sacking on Saturday night.
Critchley, most deserving of his jotters after losing to Dundee, went after referee John Beaton in the immediate aftermath of the Hampden semi with some ludicrous assertions that placed his club hoodie on a shooglier peg than ever.
First up, Michael Steinwender’s expulsion for bringing down Topi Keskinen before half-time was as clear a red card as you’ll see. Critchley insisted there were ‘recovering defenders’.
Hearts boss Neil Critchley was removed from his post on Saturday night after losing to Dundee
Referee John Beaton shows Michael Steinwender a red card after his foul on Topi Keskinen
Hearts CEO Andrew McKinlay should be embarrassed by the club’s statement on Beaton
Absolute tosh. Without the foul, Keskinen was clean through. Critchley also accused Beaton of not being able to send off Steinwender quickly enough.
‘The referee faced some criticism due to how quickly he produces the red card, but that is down to our coaching,’ countered Collum. ‘We tell referees to take their time with certain incidents. In that kind of scenario, never. If the referee starts to weigh everything up, you lose the perspective of it.’
So, Beaton got that one bang-on. And he got the late sending-off of Cammy Devlin, a decision made just before Aberdeen scored their extra-time winner, bang-on as well. Already on a booking, the midfielder has to be more self-aware when booting Dante Polvara as he attempts to clear. It was reckless.
Critchley branded the call ‘absolutely incredible’. As a poor attempt to deflect attention from one of many, many failures in his short reign at Tynecastle, it was so transparent. Critchley, brought in after Hearts had sacked Steven Naismith months after giving him a new contract, couldn’t win a game that mattered whether that was against Hibs, Aberdeen, the Old Firm or Moldovan no-hopers Petrocub.
The Tynecastle board should have been distancing themselves from the former Blackpool boss before they’d even walked out the front door of the National Stadium. Instead, they jumped into the hole he’d dug with both feet before performing the ultimate reverse ferret and handing him his P45 on Saturday night.
That’s where the Tynecastle CEO Andrew McKinlay must come in for scrutiny over the silliness of the week just gone. He ought to hang his head in shame over it. McKinlay has been recognised for doing some good work in Gorgie. The club’s link-up with Brighton owner Tony Bloom and Jamestown Analytics is fresh and exciting.
His quarterly review on the club website is a welcome commitment to openness too. Sure, the timing, just before a cup semi, was odd, but it was good to hear him admit in his last bulletin that failing to make the top six in the league is unacceptable and worthy of an apology.
Why, then, did he allow Monday’s stupid statement about Beaton’s performance and how Hearts are second-top of the ‘mistakes given against us’ table to go out on club channels?
Cammy Devlin was sent off in Hearts’ Scottish Cup semi-final loss to Aberdeen at Hampden
Hearts board should have distanced themselves from Critchley’s complaints last weekend
He might not have written it, but it is unthinkable, given his role, that he didn’t know what it contained before someone hit the ‘send’ button. And we’re talking about way more here than just the misspelling of the word ‘benefited’, although that is a heinous crime in itself.
Hearts, running the third-biggest wage bill in the league at the last count, are not in the position of now fighting to avoid relegation because of four mistakes made by officials against them. Yet, Critchley’s post-match witterings and that 500-word tirade felt like an attempt to set the dogs of war on Beaton and the SFA’s refereeing department. Over a match in which all the major decisions were actually correct.
That’s bad enough. What makes it worse is that McKinlay is on the board of the SFA. He also spent six years there as chief operating officer and then interim chief executive following the departure of Stewart Regan (remember him?) before heading off to amateur golf for a bit.
What must his former colleagues at Hampden make of all this? Of this attempt to shine the torchlight on them to take attention away from his own club’s very obvious shortcomings. Of what looked, for all the world, like a desperate attempt to play to the lowest common denominator before eventually admitting the whole sorry mess is down to a manager who wasn’t up to the job, after all.
In that Monday statement, so cowardly that no one had the cojones to put their name to it, the tenuous claim was made that the SFA had to be taken to task over their errors because the supporters deserved it. Listen, we’re dealing with a very small sample size here, admittedly, but a few glasses of stout with some Hearts fans in Glasgow’s Horse Shoe Bar after the game last Saturday evening suggested they know fine well where the real problems exist. In dreadful recruitment. In a team lacking pace. And in a head coach now out on his ear thanks to displays regularly way below par.
Referees chief Willie Collum says Beaton got the big calls right in the Scottish Cup semi-final
These were proper Hearts men. Home-and-away supporters. Guys who know football inside-out. You cannot pull the wool over their eyes and shouldn’t try to. Hearts’ issues lie within rather than on the desk of Willie Collum 40-odd miles along the M8 and Critchley’s removal now leaves the directors with nowhere to hide.
Collum’s perfectly-executed slapdown of Hearts concluded with a reference to the Devlin red-card being deftly slotted into his latest episode of ‘The VAR review’ — even though second yellows have nothing to do with VAR whatsoever.
‘It’s a very subjective decision, the second yellow card. It is very understandable, when you look at the images, why you could reach a conclusion of “reckless”,’ he said. ‘And I also understand if people have another opinion.
‘Regardless, VAR cannot get involved. I’ve said already this season that there have been certain clips of second yellow cards in Scotland where, if VAR could have got involved, they would have — because they’ve been clearly wrong. Saturday’s is clearly not a decision like that. If we move the protocol forward in the future and you could get involved in second yellow cards, we would not expect any VAR intervention regarding that decision.’
Job done. Critchley’s haverings pulled apart just in time for him to be removed from his post.
Perhaps, at the next meeting of the SFA high heid yins, someone inside Hampden might also like to challenge McKinlay on what Hearts have been playing at this week and what good they think it did for them or the game as a whole.
Clubs have too much power over young players
The words of PFA Scotland chief Fraser Wishart earlier this week on clubs holding onto the registrations of young players and refusing to let them further their careers elsewhere made for grim reading – but came as no surprise.
Anyone who has been following this matter for the last decade or more will recall the pitiful performances of representatives of the game’s governing bodies in front of the Holyrood Petitions Committee in trying to justify the status quo. Things have changed a little in recent years, but not sufficiently.
Wishart’s appraisal of what he hears within the game just make you fear that the treatment of children by clubs – the imbalance of power – is never going to be properly addressed.
‘It is important to always remember the game is run by the clubs. We have clubs investigating clubs, clubs setting the rules for the clubs,’ Wishart told The Herald. ‘I have become very aware in recent years of clubs always talking about compensation when they talk about youth players. That is all they speak about. They are utterly obsessed by it. Players, whether they are 12 or they are 21, are treated like commodities.
‘The problem for me is that clubs are not actually looking to develop these young lads into good players, to help them break into the first team, to give them a career. I think they’re only interested in selling them.
‘When you’re 15 years old, you sign a registration that ties you to the club until you’re 17, but they don’t have to offer you a professional contract when you are 16. You might want to become a pro footballer at another club, but you can’t go because a club has your registration. The whole system is just wrong.’
It sure is, but this affair feels like it has been running longer than the Cretaceous Period – with no acceptable end in sight.
James Forrest and Callum McGregor are a credit to Celtic after their latest success
Special day for Celtic stalwarts
It was really special to be inside Tannadice late on Saturday afternoon to talk to James Forrest and Callum McGregor about a landmark day in their careers.
For Forrest, tears flowed as he reflected on becoming the most decorated player in Celtic’s history with 26 trophies, surpassing the legendary Bobby Lennox, whom he plans to visit in the coming days.
Listening to McGregor discuss how they shared a moment together in the dressing room after clinching the title was poignant too. He talked about the sacrifices he’s made since the age of five to get to this stage, the work that has gone into becoming a captain with 24 medals of his own.
McGregor is an excellent flagbearer. He handles the responsibility of the armband with aplomb, represents the badge superbly. Both guys have reached these heights while remaining down-to-earth. That’s not easy in a world of celebrity and hangers-on and, as McGregor said recently, when everyone wants something from you.
Fair play to both of them. For those of us who were there to share a little bit of their overwhelming joy, it was an occasion to remember as well.
