Human endeavor versus human error
It is a depressing likeliehood that a contributory factor determining the outcome of the Premiership championship this season will be poor refereeing.
Unless Celtic or Rangers hit a sustained period of form that blows their rival, and everyone else, away, the fine margin which makes the difference between first and second place threatens to be officials’ inability to get the big calls correct.
Human endeavour and human error is a messy mix, but unavoidable as things stand at present.
Nobody disputes Rangers were fully entitled to the two penalties they were awarded against Aberdeen at Ibrox on Sunday.
Everybody appears to be in agreement that Celtic were denied two stonewall penalties in their match against Hibs at Easter Road earlier in the day.
For the match officials to miss one penalty award is careless. To miss two penalty claims of undeniable substance hints at incompetence.
It is equally undeniable that Celtic’s Olivier N’tcham was fortunate not to be ordered off for lifting his hands to an opponent, just as Rangers’ Filip Helander was the beneficiary of a referee’s self- confessed mistake when he escaped a red card at Livingston four days earlier.
It isn’t good enough, but there is no remedy and therefore every chance that we will go from one controversy after another between now and next May.
The match officials inefficiency will impact on Celtic and Rangers, of that there is no doubt.
By the same token, there will be the now traditional, and tiresome, accusations that referees have acted out of spite, malice and a sinister dedication towards refusing certain sides potentially pivotal awards due to having an agenda against them.
This is lazy and predictable thinking on the part of aggrieved fans.
Kevin Clancy and the rest of his match officials at Easter Road had an exceptionally bad day at work, and Neil Lennon was allowed the post-match decision to point out the error of their way in no uncertain terms.
But the manager was also accurate when he addressed the “flat” nature of his team’s performance and the lack of “snap” which contributed towards dropping their first league points of the season.
It was patently obvious a long way from the final whistle that Celtic could have played all day and not scored a second goal against Hibs, which is not being wise with the benefit of hindsight.
I said as much on Superscoreboard on Saturday when there were still twenty minutes of the match to go.
There is such a thing as human fallibility.
Olivier N’tcham scored a stunning goal against Partick Thistle in the Betfred Cup last Wednesday but was reluctant to take on a shot at goal in Edinburgh.
James Forrest, Lennon’s go to guy for pulling Celtic out of the fire on many and varied occasions, was uncharacteristically subdued to the point of being subbed before the end.
Odsonne Edouard was lifeless, Ryan Christie was quiet, and so on and so forth.
What was thought to be a routine afternoon against a side who had taken one point from a possible fifteen in their league games prior to Celtic’s visit to their place turned out to be a costly game in the season in which a draw is a disaster and a defeat is a catastrophe.
Celtic and Rangers have now had one of each.
Hibs have now played two league and cup matches in the space of four days, covering a three and a half hour period of open play, and not scored a goal for themselves, yet they are in a semi-final, got a draw against Celtic and their fire-fighting manager looks to have found an asbestos tracksuit from somewhere.
That’s what happens in football.
Our difficulty is that we can add to the things that will always be with us, like death and taxes, the problem of referees who are prone to eccentric decision making.
They don’t do it to unfairly influence the outcome of matches. They don’t just come from Scotland, witness the Spaniard who denied Celtic a certain penalty against Rennes in the Europa League.
But in terms of our claustrophobic, parochial wee world they do it deliberately to sabotage the progress of the title race.
They don’t, but they are going to have an unavoidable input to that competition due to a periodic inability to get things right.
Incidentally, the referee who awarded Rangers their two penalties at the weekend was Bobby Madden, described the week before by Celtic’s manager as a “great official.”
Madden, though, was implicated in the conspiracy to sway the title race by one caller to Superscoreboard on Saturday night who said that Rangers got a penalty whenever they needed one.
How do you combat this kind of stuff?
You can’t so far as I’m concerned.
All you can do is dismiss the conspiracy rhetoric while being unable to dismiss the uneasy feeling that referees will take a hapless hand in the thirty-one league matches we have left this season.
You could say that will be done against their better judgement. The irony is it’s better judgement we are looking for