As the dust settles on the Celtic Park Glasgow Derby and the discussion over some decisions made by VAR and Willie Collum continues, the SFA has just announced a successor to the current Head of Referees, Crawford Allan.
Allan has been involved at the SFA for over 30 years and was the man in charge and oversaw the launch of VAR in Scotland almost two years ago.
The controversial refereeing technology has been strongly hitting the headlines over the course of this season as Celtic and Rangers played out a closely fought battle for the title.
Now that he has stepped down, the SFA have announced his successor and it is likely to provoke a strong reaction from one side of Glasgow.
SFA appoint Willie Collum as Head of Referees
In a statement released this morning, the Scottish FA Chief Executive Ian Maxwell said [SFA], “We had applications from experienced candidates across the UK, Europe, North America, Asia and Australia.
“It is to Willie’s great credit that he emerged as the outstanding candidate from such a strong international field.”
It is an appointment that is likely to cause controversy today, especially from Rangers. Collum is clearly unpopular with the Ibrox club as they once made a formal complaint about the former whistler to the national association back in 2018. [Sky Sports]
They were unhappy at Collum’s decision to send off Daniel Candeias in a 2-0 win over St Mirren at Ibrox.
In fact, back in February of this year, current boss Philippe Clement admitted that he was unaware that Rangers were about to request that the SFA refrain from appointing Collum to any of Rangers’ future games such is the Ibrox club’s unhappiness with the former referee. [The Herald]
We discussed previously how the SFA considering former English Premier League referee, John Moss, would have been a positive step forward for the SFA.
Having someone from outside the national association taking charge would have went a long way to dispel accusations of an SFA clique and the appointment of Moss would have been regarded as a breath of fresh air in the Scottish game.
As I said, this appointment is likely to cause controversy but I suppose all we can really do is sit, watch and wait to see if the appointment of Collum will help improve refereeing and VAR standards in the Scottish game.