Time players look at themselves

I have this recurring dream.

In it, the SFA decide to take their revenge on everyone who’s criticised referees, the Compliance Officer and anything to do with the governing body’s judicial system this season.

The method they use is to appoint Andrew Dallas as the referee when Celtic play Rangers on March 31, a fixture which could by then be subtitled a league title decider.

Andrew awards Rangers six penalties in the first half and then sends Brendan Rodgers to the stand before the interval for deliberately writing in his manager’s notebook.

It doesn’t happen that I wake up in a cold sweat and make a promise never to have a glass of red wine ever again because to be involved in Scottish football just now is to be trapped in a nightmare which includes having an alarm clock that never goes off.

All we talk about is red cards, bans, appeals, sanctions, secret panels of referees who sit in retrospective judgement of controversial incidents and impose retrospective suspensions on players who have been captured getting up to no good by television’s omniverous eye.

To extend the list of things that will always be with us, like death and taxes, we can now add whataboutery.

Rangers’ goalkeeper Allan McGregor will have his appeal against a two match ban for a challenge on Aberdeen’s Lewis Ferguson heard tomorrow.

Ferguson, who retaliated with what looked suspiciously like a premeditated kick at the goalkeeper minutes after the original offence, got off with a booking when a red card looked more appropriate.

Now, in the wake of McGregor and Alfredo Morelos having been banned by the SFA, there is a frenzy to have Kilmarnock’s Alan Power suspended for his boot landing on Ryan Jack’s face during Saturday night’s Scottish Cup tie at Rugby Park. And, to be fair, there is merit in that argument.

Dundee United’s manager, Robbie Nielson, was also correct to say it was incredible that the referee at his club’s tie with St. Mirren on Saturday, Willie Collum, should have missed a deliberate forearm smash by the home side’s Paul McGinn on Cammy Smith.

McGinn was yellow carded. The punishment certainly did not begin to fit the crime.

Collum was more accurate when he dismissed United’s Callum Butcher for a disgraceful, chest high kick at St. Mirren’s Ryan Flynn.

The reason for reproducing a catalogue of the weekend’s greatest hits is to make the point that players are at the root of all of the acrimony which currently engulfs the game and has caused relationships between referees and managers, managers and fellow managers, and supporters of all clubs to deteriorate.

The allegation made against match officials in this country is that they couldn’t spot a total eclipse of the sun, far less Jermain Defoe having another wee think about hitting the deck in an opposing team’s penalty box on Saturday night.

And it can’t be denied that serous mistakes have been made and inconsistency is rife among referees.

But what about the weekend for glaring examples of players themselves turning football into a game of un-armed combat with periodic attempts at duplicity thrown in?

You can slaughter the disciplinary system all you like, but what about the level of indiscipline presently being exhibited by the players themselves?

McGinn and Butcher were guilty of primitive, caveman stuff. Power was reckless and dangerous. And then there was Kirk Broadfoot demonstrating the cynical side of the business.

The Kilmarnock defender did slip on his club’s awful playing surface before landing on the ball and cuddling it with both arms inside the penalty area. It was the stonewall penalty of all time but Broadfoot rose to his feet and placed his hands to his head in that gesture which signals disbelief that the referee has had the temerity to interpret his actions as illegal.

What’s all that about?

What possible line of defence could Broadfoot present that would get him off the hook? He looked as daft as Defoe when he suddenly threw himself in some kind of sideways balletic movement towards the end of the game.

As daft as Celtic’s Oliver Burke had looked while throwing himself to the ground inside the penalty box against Hibs last Wednesday night when there was nobody near him.

What kind of show are we running here?

We’ve got habitual offenders like Rangers’ Alfredo Morelos, with four red cards and fifteen bookings for a season which still has one-third of the way to go.

We’ve got would be con men, users of disproportionate force, like Celtic’s Jozo Simunovic and Scott Brown in that match against Hibs, and ample evidence of a game that could be doing with pulling itself together.

It is a contact sport and it is a man’s game, but that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to call out the moments when referees and players fall beneath acceptable standards.

Brendan Rodgers said last week that Scottish referees were, strictly speaking, amateurs in a professional environment. And who could argue with the factual aspect of that observation?

However, are we not also entitled to expect better standards of professionalism from the professionals in a professional environment?

You can’t complain about the SFA firing a gun occasionally when you were the one who loaded the bullets in the first place.

All we ask is that football stuff. The kind of thing Celtic demonstrated so well against St. Johnstone yesterday.

All that old fashioned stuff, like passing the ball to each other and not trying to dis-member anybody on the other side in the process. The way we were before the world went mad

• Hugh Keevins