Chief Executive Ian Maxwell has hit back at criticisms of refereeing standards in Scotland while outlining the Scottish FA’s plans to address the fallout from the Premier Sports Cup Final controversy.
It’s been a turbulent week for the SFA following the decision by VAR officials Alan Muir and Frank Connor not to award Rangers a stoppage-time penalty after Vaclav Cerny was pulled down by Liam Scales.
Celtic ultimately triumphed in a dramatic penalty shootout to lift the trophy, but the incident has left referees’ chief Willie Collum branding the error as “unacceptable.”
The controversy spilled into the subsequent weekend’s Scottish Premiership action, beginning with Kilmarnock’s clash against Motherwell.
Motherwell’s Dan Casey was controversially sent off by referee Chris Graham despite VAR recommending he review his decision. Motherwell manager Stuart Kettlewell later criticised the overall standard of officiating in Scotland.
Maxwell appeared on BBC Sportsound to address the growing concerns and was confronted by pundit Tom English, who argued that the root of the problem was a lack of quality among referees and VAR officials.
English said: “The bigger piece in this is the referees are making mistakes, the VAR is making mistakes because they are not good enough. They are not consistent enough…”
Maxwell interjected: “That’s unfair, Tom. They make mistakes.”
English pressed on: “Of course they do, but should they be making these mistakes?”
Maxwell responded: “No, but they are people. You can do all the training you want; they will have had more coaching than they have ever had. You can’t replicate what happens in the VAR room. I would compare it to the pressure of a penalty shootout. You can prepare, but you can’t replicate walking up in front of a full stadium to take a penalty kick.”
When asked how the SFA intends to prevent similar mistakes in the future, Maxwell outlined plans to continue working with referees on consistency and decision-making.
He said: “That is obviously a discussion that is ongoing with Willie about coaching. When something like that goes wrong, you have to analyse and review. He spends more time with the top officials than anybody. They are on Zoom calls every week analysing decisions that were right and decisions that were wrong to try and get that level of consistency.”
Maxwell acknowledged that while errors will occur, the focus must be on eliminating the most glaring mistakes:
“The reality is that mistakes will happen, but what we need to eliminate is the real toe curlers. The ones that 99 per cent of football fans watching on TV think, ‘How can that be?’ – those kill us.”
The SFA now faces the challenge of restoring public trust in the officiating system while ensuring such high-profile errors become increasingly rare.
I actually think the right call was made in relation to the “penalty” incident. There was an initial trip by Scales which caused Cerny to stumble. Beaton should have blown for that. The subsequent pull of the jersey was therefore a secondary issue and shouldn’t have counted. There is also the fact that a penalty given isn’t a penalty scored. rangers didn’t lose because of that incident.. They lost because the missed a penalty. There have been far worse decisions made recently. To highlight just one. St. Mirren v Dundee Utd where the United goalie should have been off the park and Saints should have had a penalty. This probably cost the Paisley side dear.