How many honest mistakes can officials make?

The SFA have been keeping their hands clean this season by having a couple of ex-employees doing their dirty work in public for them. Hugh Dallas, surprisingly and possible even commendably, has kept his head under the parapet of late, only surfacing for a handbag joust with Jim Gannon.

Shug hasn’t needed to pop up time and time again though, not when Stuart Dougal and Kenny Clark can recite the party line whilst pocketing a few extra pennies for themselves.

As you know, there was a massive wrong decision in the Motherwell v Rangers game on Wednesday night.

We’ve discussed it already, blah blah blah, same old story, same old reactions so lets not get dragged into it all again but again, the public comments by ex-refs are only making the situation worse.

Perhaps this is part of the plan, get a few ex-refs who are already pantomime villains in the supporters eyes, get them making ludicrous comments and take the heat off the current men in black. If so, bravo SFA, the plan is working perfectly!

Stuart Dougal, in examining the blunder which prevented Rangers from slipping two behind, had this to say;

“To put it bluntly, Gilmour gambled that Forbes had come from an offside position – and he got it wrong.”

This is clearly unacceptable for any referee or assistant referee to do. Unless the player was seen to be offside, surely you can’t give offside? Is Dougal helping anyone by offering this as an explanation?

And the gamble, it was made in a split second, and instinct would kick in wouldn’t it? Well, football people are football people and whether it is a five a side kick-about with your mates or watching your team play, when you claim on instinct, you claim for your team – that’s how instinct works.

It’s great to know that the men in charge are admitting to working in this manner as opposed to actually making decisions on what happened

Dougal wont criticise the officials but he will open fire on the players. A few weeks back it was Celtic strikers to blame for the club dropping points. This week, it is Motherwell’s Ross Forbes and Mark Reynolds to blame for the Fir Park club for not taking all three points.

Firstly, Forbes is at fault for having the audacity to score whilst being onside – the rotter, John Boyle should fine him for this act of insubordination!

And then we had this comment;

“The critics have been out in force, alleging that decision cost Well three points, but that unwanted title must go to Mark Reynolds as it was his poor defending that allowed Boyd in near the end to snatch an equaliser.”

Perhaps Reynolds made an honest mistake? Perhaps Reynolds doesn’t need reminded of his error which let Kris Boyd get Rangers back on level terms? Dougal makes the claim that the linesman doesn’t need to be publicly reminded of his honest mistake but feels the need to criticise two Motherwell players.

All football people have an opinion on the game and the outcomes, that’s fine but the hypocrisy and lack of integrity that spills from Dougal’s column is getting worse. And if the league race narrows and gets tighter, it will get even more outrageous.

If you think the officials are under scrutiny now, if the gap comes down to a point or three, then the intensity levels will get even higher. And all the while, Stuart Dougal will be backed into a corner….”well, I can see why using a rope to lasso the striker in the box could be given as a penalty but to me, you have to ask why the striker allowed his legs to be caught in the rope? The decision to play on was correct!”

You would have to wonder how this sort of approach would apply in the business world.

For instance, say an auditing firm like KPMG were analysing the books of a company and found a significant deficit of money which looks to have been moved to an individual’s bank account. Would this be recorded as an honest mistake? An honest mistake that could impact on many people’s livelihoods and expenditures? Or would a representative of KPMG say it was the bank teller’s fault for later cashing a cheque that was handed to him or her? Probably!

Another thing that greatly concerns us about Dougal’s column is that the man insists it is always honest men making mistakes. This would imply Dougal belives that honesty is important to him.

Oddly enough, in his same column, Dougal refers to Kris Boyd (at the 2008 Scottish Cup final, not the leaner and fitter Boyd of 2010) as being “13 stone of solid muscle.”

Haha, there’s not a lot of honesty in that reference!

You weren’t much of a referee Stuart but get yourself along to The Stand, an alternative career may await!

Stuart Dougal no doubt thinks the linesman showed some Bravery on Wednesday which sadly turned out to be an honest mistake, was this on his iPod before he wrote his column?

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