- Rangers have been fined £3,000 after former defender called a decision ‘corrupt’ while co-commentating on club TV channel
- Officials’ failure to award a goal in the game in question has reopened the debate about goal-line technology
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John Brown made a Horlicks of it. Let’s be honest. No one in their right mind can possibly be happy with the overall standard of officiating in this country, but, when you’re doing the commentary on a club TV station, you’re on a hiding to nothing when you brand a decision ‘corrupt’. No matter how unfathomable it may be.
He landed Rangers a three-grand fine under the SFAs disciplinary code. The Ibrox outfit, as is their right, have insisted that every comment made on official club media outlets will now have to be scrutinised intently. Of course, it’s going to turn next season into a demented cavalcade of whataboutery and tit-for-tat skirmishing, but what’s new?
The debate now seems to be moving onto why the SFA have opened up this whole can of worms. Why other incidents such as former Celtic captain Tom Boyd suggesting referee John Beaton, one of ‘12 men’ the Parkhead side were up against, would be welcomed in ‘his’ Rangers-supporting pub after failing to give a penalty against Dunfermline or author Irvine Welsh branding Alfredo Morelos a ‘sticky bun’ – rhyming slang for ‘Hun’ – on Hibs TV and claiming he should be ‘macheted into small pieces’ escaped financial punishment.
It’s a valid discussion topic, but it’s not the big issue here. Nor is what should and shouldn’t be said on club TV, really. Brown overegged the pudding, Rangers TV commentator Tom Miller stepped in to correct him, as is his duty, and it could easily just have been left there.
Brown was a guest analyst. His could hardly be construed as an official club view. If pundits and analysts and everyone else are now going to go onto these in-house productions terrified of saying anything, who is going to be interested in paying to watch? It’s 2025, after all, and both media, its consumption and what constitutes sellable content is changing by the week.
Rather, the issue it would be nice to hear people talking about again, above all this stuff, is how we ended up in this mess in the first place.
How an effort from Rangers midfielder Nicolas Raskin against Hibs at Easter Road – which the vast majority of people, or four out of five on the SFA’s KMI panel, could see had clearly crossed the goal-line before home defender Rocky Bushiri got his boot on it – wasn’t given.
How it could be that linesman Calum Spence, who seemed to have a reasonable vantage point, didn’t clock it. How VAR Andrew Dallas either didn’t have the gumption or the proper tech to give the goal. And whether there is a viable way to stop this kind of thing happening again.
As it happened, the incident played out in a dead-rubber, end-of-season fixture. It doesn’t bear thinking about what the fall-out would have been had it taken place on a last-day title decider. Rangers, shortly after the final whistle that very afternoon, called for the introduction of goal-line technology into the game, but their demands have rather disappeared into the ether since.
SFA president Mike Mulraney did mention it around the time of the governing body’s AGM, but there is no real sense of a national conversation, or any significant momentum, developing – when there really should be.
Mulraney estimates the cost of bringing adequate goal-line technology into the Premiership as £1million a year. He should know. The SFA pay for it in the semis and final of the Scottish Cup.
However, he gives off the air of a guy who privately knows it won’t fly because of the cost – talking about how clubs might prefer to invest it ‘in a new facility for disabled fans, a new bit in the car park, fixing the roof or whatever else’.
The SPFL did, to be fair, look at goal-line technology many moons ago, before VAR and all that, and decided it was too expensive. The feeling was that it was really only for elite league competitions.
In truth, not an awful lot has changed. It tends to be bigger, richer leagues that continue to use it. However, that’s not to say the SPFL can’t consider it for their top league again. Given what it would contribute to the game, the added protection it would give to officials and the good it would do for the overall standing of the sport here, it is worth asking properly whether the top 12 see worth in ringfencing maybe £90,000 of their annual budgets to bring it in.
And if not, as looks likely, can’t there be some sort of investigation carried out into whether there are more creative ways to cobble funds together and get close to the overall cost?
A different set-up called Goal Line Replay – consisting of cameras on the right and left of the goal frame – was introduced to the Netherlands’ top flight in 2023. Their national association, the KNVB, has been at the heart of it and has made significant monetary contributions.
Whether that or full-fat goal-line technology is seen as an answer, couldn’t the SFA pitch something into the pot rather than, as Mulraney seemed to do, contract out the entire decision and related cost to our top-flight clubs? Would someone be interested in sponsoring the use of new technology?
Who knows? It just feels right now, though, that the whole subject is gradually being nudged back under the carpet or written off in closed rooms, which is wrong when you consider what the SFA’s own head of refereeing Willie Collum said about goal-line tech when reflecting on the Raskin issue during his monthly online VAR Review.
‘I don’t think anybody wouldn’t welcome it, but it’s a cost implication,’ he said. ‘You balance the cost with how many times in a competition in a season do you need it. Maybe even just one decision could be crucial in deciding which way the championship goes, who gets into a European place, who’s relegated, who ends up in a play-off.
‘So, maybe even for the cost implication, when the stakes are so high, it would be better to have it than not to have it.’
It would certainly be good to consider all the possibilities in a transparent, public arena.
True, bringing in VAR hasn’t helped the reputation of our referees much. Indeed, given some of the high-profile mistakes over the past couple of seasons, you could argue it has made things worse.
That, of course, is a separate subject, connected to overall standards, a malaise that pre-dates Collum’s time in his current role and, in the view of some, a lack of outside eyes and input into a system that has traditionally been full of the same old names and faces.
Technology is not the enemy, though. Anything and everything that can help – and educate – the newer, younger officials now being urged through the ranks is to be welcomed.
It’s why it might be nice to see a serious look at some kind of goal-line technology pushed up the agenda instead of more and more talk about ex-players getting a bit ahead of themselves over a microphone and whether some author best known 30 years ago really meant it when he said the chopped-up remnants of Alfredo Morelos should be left out for the seagulls to eat.
Move abroad would be perfect for teen star LennonNEWS from Lennon Miller’s dad Lee that the Motherwell midfielder plans to take the next step of his career in Europe comes as music to the ears.
As does the assertion that his transfer out of Fir Park, which will naturally arrive this summer, has to be one based around personal development and going somewhere he will play regular first-team football.
Going abroad is really where it’s at for young Scottish players with big potential right now. Celtic were interested in Miller in January and would no doubt be interested again, but, even though there is the lure of probable Champions League action, what would staying in Scotland – rolling over the likes of Falkirk and Dundee every other week – really do for his overall education?
He has already stated he wants to become the best midfielder the country possesses in future and getting out of here will give him a far better opportunity to achieve that admirable ambition.
At 18, Miller has a lot to learn, but the raw talent is there, he carries a physical presence and has shown, in captaining Motherwell, that there’s an old head on young shoulders there.
The likes of Lewis Ferguson has shown what can be possible when jumping straight from the SPFL to an upwardly-mobile side such as Bologna in Italy’s Serie A. By all accounts, though, there are teams from France and Germany showing an interest too.
Whatever Miller and his family choose, everything points to them choosing well. And it’s a relief to know that means politely refusing the limitations of the Old Firm as well as resisting the lure of exorbitant wages in an English system where way too many young players just disappear without trace. Prospective millionaires or not.
Hopefully Hibs can make Danish boss eat his words
FC MIDTJYLLAND boss Thomas Thomasberg certainly gets this week’s award for ‘man most in need of his balloon popping’ after predicting with unyielding certainty that his team will brush aside Hibs in the second qualifying round of the Europa League.
There’s only one small problem with his reasoning. Going by the comments he gave to a TV station in Denmark, it looks for all the world like he hasn’t actually watched David Gray’s team in any particular detail yet. If at all.
‘We will advance to the next round,’ he said. ‘I know what Scottish football stands for.
‘There is some speed, some physicality in the game, but we need to take a closer look at the team itself and how they do it now, and we have plenty of time for that.’
Midtjylland will be favourites, no doubt. However, Thomasberg has given his Scottish opponents no lack of motivation. Wouldn’t it be lovely to see him made to eat his words?
