Ian Maxwell isn’t fooling anyone. Instead of going on about getting police protection for referees and stuff that’s really not his remit, why doesn’t the SFA chief executive focus more on the issues he does have control over — such as coming up with some ideas to improve the poor standard of officiating in this country?
Blaming managers and fans and ‘a hysterical media backdrop’ for some nugget allegedly putting whistler John Beaton’s personal details on the internet is risible. It’s a deflection tactic, a weak attempt to stop a necessary conversation about how standards must be raised within a gravy-train environment for part-timers and so many of the same old faces.
The World Cup will rage on this summer without a Scottish official near it. It’s ten years since we last had a referee at a major men’s tournament. That’s proof enough, in itself, that things aren’t good enough here.
Instead of talking about that, though, Maxwell pushes narratives about wild allegations of corruption and bias and making phone calls to the head of the serious crime division.
Look, Hearts got a stonewall penalty turned down after a VAR review at Motherwell that, had they scored it, would probably have won them the title. The referee involved, Steven McLean, was somehow awarded the Scottish Cup final days later.
This, however, is not about corruption, as convenient as it may be to divert the discussion towards those on the fringes who expound such theories. It isn’t about some conspiracy to hand Celtic the league. That’s a red herring.
SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell is wrong to try to cut down criticism at every corner
Good grief, Friday’s VAR Review show highlighted the Parkhead club being denied a stonewall penalty of their own at Hibs. In a 2-1 home loss to the Easter Road side in February, a result that looked like it had killed their campaign, Liam Scales was also denied a clear spot-kick when having his shirt pulled. This season, for all clubs, has been full of this kind of thing.
There’s no kind of self-evaluation from Maxwell, though. No reflection. Rangers’ CEO Jim Gillespie has met with other clubs and made sensible suggestions about investing in VAR and using World Cup money to do that.
Maxwell blew it out of the water. His comment that it is ‘unfortunate’ that ‘we have a culture within Scottish football that wants to focus on the negative and forensically analyse every decision made’ is mind-boggling.
What’s unfortunate is that he seems unable to grasp that there’s a problem with VAR and refereeing here and, ergo, seems unwilling to consider ideas to make it better.
Of course, it’s hard to understand why Maxwell landed the job he’s in eight years ago. He was previously the managing director of Partick Thistle. They got relegated just before he moved to the SFA. On his unveiling at Hampden, he spent his time fending off questions about being a place man installed through a stitch-up.
It’s easy to see why he might be reluctant to challenge the status quo lest it put his £230,000-a-year role at risk.
His problem, though, is that the end of the season put global attention on refereeing here. Lots of folk from around the world felt VAR got it wrong in awarding Celtic that late penalty at Motherwell for a Sam Nicholson ‘handball’.
Friday’s VAR Review offered little to suggest Beaton believed Nicholson handballed it either. He seemed to be depending on assurances from VAR Andrew Dallas in the end.
Wider scrutiny is the SFA’s biggest enemy here. That’s probably why Maxwell is going to such lengths to shut it down. Yet, the arrogance he has exhibited this week, coupled with the stark incompetence witnessed from his officials, does little other than undermine further a system it’s tough to have any faith in.
