The SFA Head of Refereeing, John Fleming, spoke about the semi-final incident on Sunday, largely to protect his fraternity. Referee Steven McLean made a huge error but Fleming said “I don’t think there was anyone in the ground who would have thought it was 100% a penalty and sending off until they had seen the replay.”
This flies in the face of the Celtic players who claimed for a penalty on the spot, the raised voices from thousands of Celtic supporters, and the shout from the TV commentator. Fleming’s assertion is demonstrably untrue.
He is a man in a position of authority at the SFA. He is allowed to have opinions, or to disagree with any club, but making untrue statements to protect his referees is a wholly inappropriate. If is the standard referees are held to, no wonder we have problems. Having asked for clarification on the refereeing error yesterday, I expect Celtic will be even keener on an explanation for Fleming’s incredulous comment.
I’ve linked here to a Stanford University report on Omission Bias in Sports. The report finds that people are biased to favour inaction (i.e. don’t make a decision) over action (make a decision which will have a profound impact).
It’s an interesting concept which good refereeing guidance will account for. They found that “For all sports, effect [is]stronger if game is close and weak when score is lopsided”.
Omission bias is what we should be looking for in Scottish football. Evidence this video of former referee Kenny Clark, who while still officiating SPL games told an audience that he held a grudge against Celtic’s John Hartson and failed to award him a foul which he saw clearly enough to describe in some detail.
Unfortunately, no journalist has ever been able to contact Mr Clark to ask him about his grudges or omission bias. If this was England, the media would not allow Clark to flaunt omission bias while defending it in others, he would be called to account.
See above, Sunday’s officials greeting each other on the pitch before kick off. Before the dust settles on this one, some of us better learn a new handshake. Those wanting real change at the SFA will have to fight for it.
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In my opinion our support has failed to mobilise properly over the OBA. One decent turn out at George Sq that was it. Very few bothered to help when FAC stood a candidate at the Govan by- election, even fewer turned up for last years SNP conference and that was with a free bus provided.
Meanwhile Theres cameras still on you everywhere. People are now being convicted for singing a song which is offensive to those who are offended by our very existence.
What burns were the flame used to be.
Dropping this in and won’t be around for the backlash but I thought that clip of Kenny Clark was quite funny.
A guy who is as passionately a referee (as weird as that may seem) as we are Celtic fans.
He’s made some howlers, reacts the way football fans do to criticism of their team (we all know we have a default position to defend our club, players and our own fans) and ain’t perfect.
I’ve played golf with Kenny and as many of you will know he came along a couple of times, without taking a penny, to referee the CQN fives. Asked to do the final at 11.45 he turned up at 8.30 to do the whole tournament, in the pissing rain. Pure hun, eh?
So the reality is, and I am more informed than most on CQN, that Kenny may be getting entrenched but was genuine in his career and is part of no clique. Yes, we can point to comments and articles we vehemently disagree with, but that’s where it ends. He has no affection for Celtic or Rangers (deceased).
HH
Dwindling gates will be the only thing to make the Celtic board grow a set of balls.
The board’s actions in proposing the setting up of FoCUS, banning GB and other actions compared to their inaction against referee/SPFL/SFA bias against us will only add to the numbers who won’t renew season books.
Maybe, just maybe the penny will drop with the board and they will stand up for the fans, but I doubt it………….going by form they ain’t that smart, or interested.
cynicaloldbastardCSC
Neganon
I have been on this blog for approx 3 years. Almost every one of your posts rails against Institutional racism and anti catholic bigotry in Scotland.
Other than boring the pants of many on here with your perpetual diatribe, have you taken any political action to remedy what is a political problem? You expect a FOOTBALL club to take YOUR POLITICAL points to try and change things. If you are not involved politically to change the situation as you see it, then you are a hypocrite, hiding behind the anonymity afforded by our host, who you have the cheek to blame for things not changing.
IF you want political change, join a political group. Simples! Boring the pants off us on here in your inimitable objectionable manner will definitely not achieve the changes you say you want.
Auldheid – is it true that Celtic have written to UEFA about Res 12?
NegAnon2
08:49 on
22 April, 2015
I’m pretty certain that the last time numbers were produced there were more arrests of Sevco fans under the OB act than any other team. So not exactly working as a hammer to keep Timmy down.
That still doesn’t alter the fact that it needs binned.
And there are no Catholics in the SNP cabinet? Seriously? I find that……ehhhhh strange.
Phyllis
Not in my ken. That reference to it has been changed by Phil suggests not.
In my view only that would be the ultimate recourse if there was a reason to take it.
I don’t think it is near that point yet.
Let’s just wait developments and not jump ahead.
Td67,
It’s not only strange. It’s factually incorrect.
HH
Phyllis,
Paul67 and brogan touched on it last night.
Without scrolling back they said something along the lines of ‘ not to their knowledge’
HH
geordie munro
09:38 on 22 April, 2015
Td67,
It’s not only strange. It’s factually incorrect.
HH
I was thinking that too, why would anyone post stupid crap like that?
Regarding the singing of the roll of honour…someone made an interesting post just after Ireland had won the 6 Nations at Murrayfield.They were basically saying that it was interesting to see that the Edinburgh police were very welcoming and helpful to the Irish fans and how it was funny that they did’nt treat another group of fans carrying tricolours and green and white scarves (us) with the same helpful and friendly stance.Now i would guess that this may down to the fact that the Irish fans unlike us were not singing songs on a regular basis about the IRA .I was speaking to my friend on Saturday and like me his parents are/ were Irish but we are fed up listening to our away support constantly singing IRA songs at our matches.While i agree that these songs are not sectarian why dont we leave them for concerts by the Wolftones or Charlie and the Bhoys and sing songs in support of Celtic(we have plenty of them).This would also stop young bhoys getting arrested for singing these songs and take away the old “they are as bad as each other argument.
Td67,
Dunno neebs. I’ve never voted anything other than labour in my 21 years… Just pointing stuff oot :)
HH
Auldheid:
Are you telling me that Celtic are not following due PLC process because – trying to ensure a level playing field in Scotland – they fear the club would be financially penalised by UEFA; That they’ve in fact reneged on their obligations and responsibilities whilst encouraging others to do their required work for them. I remember Bosman. And there are non-corrupt courts in Europe.
Is that what you are saying, Celtic PLC are not doing what a PLC should legally do, rather they are just passing the buck onto well meaning others who have no official authority or voice?
So either Phil is making it up ,or he is being fed lies.
If the club have issued a letter to UEFA they could simply issue a statement.
Like the have just done to the SFA.
Someone wants to mislead us.
That is another self inflicted scandal.
Outrageous Lies.
TT
Geordie Deila time…..
Efe in for Hoover. Gms and SA in for kc and Forrest.
Easy
HH
Off to Rome on Sunday….need a pub to watch out games next week??? Any suggestions please. I find Celticbars.com pretty out of touch the last time I used it.
By the way, we will win tonight…
Auldheid, Geordie M – thanks.
Just catching up on the SFA admission that the penalty decision was wrong. The charge for the ICT player doesn’t make the situation any better of course – and what now are they going to do about the officials who “missed” a blatant offence?
Kevjungle you make a valid point
Why did Celtic play with one striker and Inverness play with 2??
We did not have a goal scorer who could score a goal over 90 mins !!!l
Two strikers in a wide open pitch like Hampden should have happened from the biggest club in scotland
Why not. You just have to look at our CEO shambles of a striker policy
The job of a ceo is to ensure that we have players on the park to do a job
The fact that we are not able to play two at Hampden is down to the CEO
Buck stops there
“and what now are they going to do about the officials who “missed” a blatant offence?”
Gordon,
I’ll guess they won’t be refereeing this weekend and they won’t be reffing the final either.
Not far enough imo.
HH
If only there was an imminent UK General Election on the horizon.
Then everyone who has a vote and is against the Act can register their protest via the ballot box.
A law is a law until it is repealed.
While it is in force, anyone breaking the law is liable for prosecution, no matter how flawed or unfair the law is.
Everyone knows what, in the authorities eyes, is a breach of the law.
So, everyone knows what to expect.
Defiance is stupid and ineffectual. It only provides stats for the law makers and justifies them.
The ballot box is the democratic way.
“Why did Celtic play with one striker and Inverness play with 2??”
Sydney,
They had an extra man and could afford to and before they had an extra man we were tawing them.
geordie munro
Ditto, but I was just wondering, cheers.
GM
“Tawing”
I haven’t read or heard that term in years.
I wonder if it is particular to Fife.
TT
jmccormick
I would pop up to Frankie Bhoys hoos VCSC, tell me he never misses a game :)
TT and Geordie Munro
Aye’ tawing’ was a commonly used expression when I was younger…in Fife. LIke you TT haven’t heard it for years.
Hi Paul67,
Having now had a chance to following your links i.e. On omission bias and Kenny Clark’s after dinner speech, I must say this is an excellent leader.
Now omission bias as you state deals with a specific element of refereeing.
Officials make calls that fall into four categories:-
• The correct call
• The incorrect call
• The correct non-call
• The incorrect non-call.
Now of course omission bias clearly deals with the incorrect non-call i.e. The offences that the referees fail to award.
The document was succinct and interesting and a couple bullet points caught my eye.
– Omission bias is stronger when the game situation is crucial.
– Bias however is predictable, can be gamed and doesn’t balance out.
– Large predictable bias on referees calls
• Can be gamed by savvy players and coaches.
Now then that’s interesting stuff and if you are a coach you could really spend a lot of time to analyse this and put it into a game plan.
Of course what it really doesn’t touch on is what it means for officials. It of course assumes the referees are going to act in good faith.
In other words the underlying psychology of the officials in this document is unconscious.
As Kenny Clark ably demonstrates when he talks about his failure to award BBJ a foul that he clearly sees, the motivation for omission bias can be partial or even deliberate.
In other words if we were dealing with the savvy official(s) whose motives were partial or indeed unscrupulous, omission bias could play a significant part in the outcome of a match.
In fact as an official you could “fail to see” a crucial offense and not award it, then defend your omission by stating well these things happen in a game, your view was blocked or you couldn’t be 100% sure.
Mibbees Big Jock was wrong, mibbee Bobby wasn’t in a better position to influence the game after all.
Hail Hail
TT,
I know the schools used to call the ol belt the Lochgelly Tawse.
Made in a wee place between cardenden and Lochgelly.
HH
SydneyTim
Why did Celtic play with one striker and Inverness play with 2??
You just have to look at our CEO shambles of a striker policy
I’m more inclined to look at a manager who’s played 4-2-3-1 in nearly every game since he got here. Maybe the board should announce they’ve written to Ronny Deila, asking for an explanation.
Up over,
That was quite funny for you:))
Sydney shoulda just got tore right into Lawwell instead of showing his ignorance in his opening gambit
HH
Phil Mac G standing by his Celtic letter to UEFA story and that it has had nothing to do with this weekends events.
HH
“and what now are they going to do about the officials who “missed” a blatant offence?”
Probably put them up for promotion on better money within UEFA:))))
Good Morning.
Two issues to dicuss and clarify ( at least a little ) quickly before heading out.
First Res 12.
Celtic PLC do not, and never have, owned control of Res 12 and its aims. The Board of the club originally thought the resolution was not necessary and they stated so publicly. They also stated why they reached that conclusion.
To be frank, that view changed once they had been informed and educated as to why certain shareholders thought that the resolution was necessary.
They were presented with information, and a purpose of mind if you like, which made them change their mind and for the first time EVER a motion from the floor of the AGM was adjourned so that everyone could consider what to do in terms of strategy.
A year later it was adjourned again, but this time because there was more information available and further matters to consider about just how the whole thing would proceed, and how the information could be used and presented in a way that was acceptable to, and agreed upon by, both the Celtic PLC board and the shareholders repreentatives concerned.
That has not been an easy process purely because you are dealing with information that has to be checked through, verified and an argument and a case built around its strongest and clearest points.
This has not been a process which has simply been undertaken by a small group of shareholders but also by various professionals who have given advice, guidance and opinion about the argument set out and the evidence which supports that argument.
Even getting to those advisers has been a slow and laborious process because of the huge range of conflicts of interest.
The SFA, SPFL, Rangers PLC, BDO, HMRC, newspapers and all the individuals, companies, investors and isntitutions you have ever thought about, heard of or connected with footballing events over the last 4 years all have their own lawyers and advisers. So finding “Independents” to check things through has been no easy task.
However, there is now a clear timeline of events, a body of evidence which goes with that timeline, and a detailed case to answer relating to certain, but not all, of the information that has been gathered.
The board of Celtic PLC are aware of all of this, have seen all of it, and have been appraised of all of it.
However, they were not presented with certain crucial details until last Friday morning. Until then they were in the dark about something that the shareholders concerned had been researching and verifying for months.
Phil’s article is not wholly acccurate.
There has been no letter to UEFA that I am aware of, and at this juncture had there been I would be both surprised and annoyed at to an extent.
No such letter should be going to UEFA without the consent of the shareholders who would want to have input as to the terms of reference.
Nor have Celtic PLC written to the SFA about these matters to my knowledge.
However the appropriate party at the SFA has been in discussions with representatives of Celtic PLC for months about the issues raised by Res 12, and those issues, their detail and a certain amount of evidence and argument is now with the SFA officer concerned for him to deal with.
Again, Celtic PLC know this and have discussed those details and the issues with him at a very recent meeting.
What happens next?
Wait and see. We all wait and see – although as I understand it it has been accepted that doing nothing is not an option.
However let me pose a question about timing and so on.
How do you change a long held culture within a business or organisation?
How do you bring about a change of view and practice in an organisation?
One answer is that you cut off its head – though that is only one answer.
Whose tenure of office is coming to an end? Who recently failed to gain a place on a UEFA committee? Who is due to be replaced?
I am speculating here but who would you want to replace and have a say on the type of person and the type of culture which would succeed any such person?
In unrelated chat, a well known poster on this and other forums described Res 12 to me in new terms just the other day.
” It’s a machete!” He said.
ISSUE 2 Lord Carloway’s decision on role of honour.
The courts of law in any country are a funny and artifiial place.
They are places where your enemy is your “friend” or even “learned friend” and where you then go on to persuade a judge that the “learned friend” is in fact anything but “learned”. In fact you try to persuade the judge that he or she is talking out a hole in their arse ….. in the nicest possible terms.
In years gone by I knew Carloway when he was a young advocate. He is a good lawyer. However he is an Edinburgh man, an Edinburgh Lawyer and he uses the language and the expressions of an instituionalised Edinburgh advocate.
His wife, if I recall correctly is also a lawyer, and families of lawyers have an awful habit of discussing everything and anything like lawyers and in the language of lawyers.
So against that background you have to look at what he says and why.
In my opinion – and forgive me but sometimes I revert back to being a boring lawyer type fart – what he says is quite interesting and he is very deliberate in his words like all judges are.
He doesn’t answer any questions he has not been asked nor proffer any opinions of a personal nature. He just presents his interpretation of the law.
He says another judge determined that the song can be sectarian or offensive and that it has been widely accepted that it is so,
Really? Where is the evidence that it is widely accepted and is that acceptance reasonable and on what evidence did the other judge base his decision?
He does not go into that because he is not asked to.
He then says that the song is one which celebrates 10 men who were members of a proscribed organisation and that as such it is understandable why some people will find the song at least offensive if not sectarian.
There is logic to that argument, but then again Nelson Mandela was a convicted member of a proscribed organisation. It could also be argued that Bonnie Prince Charlie, William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, The Suffragettes, Trade Union leaders and so on were also at one time members of proscribed organisations or the equivalent.
Maybe at one time it was unlawful to sing about any of them, but is it today? The answer is no clearly not.
In essence, Carloway leaves the whole issue open to one of public opinion and that is extremely dangerous and subjective because eventually you get down to the nitty gritty — is taking offence at anythng reasonable in the eyes of the law and is “reasonableness” a sufficient and proper test when it comes to examening criminal charges and criminal legislation?
However, he goes on to make it plain that the singing of this song is not a criminal offence anywhere other than at a football match. He explains that is what the legislation was specifically aimed at, and what it intended to criminalise.
He does not express any opinion as to whether this is good law, sensible law, workable law, reasonable law or anything else. He simply says that it is the law of the land as things stand.
He then goes on to dismiss the appeal which was brought on the grounds that the accused did not necessarily realise that they were breaking any law by singing the song concerened and that their lack of knowledge and the lack of clarity in the law goes against article 7 of the European Convention of Human Rights which more or less says that for someone to be in breach of the law, the law has to be clear and recogniseable.
Note that the appeal was not taken on the grounds that the law is daft or unworkable, or that the song should not be considered offensive or sectarian by a reasonable man or in any given circumstances surrounding the actual event.
Nor is there any argument that if the entire crowd at a football match sang exactly the same song then there could hardly be any offense cuased, nor whether the legislation was intended to cover the possibility that 60,000 people could be offensive all at once and in the one place — or that the same 60,000 people acting in the same way whilst at a concert or the cinema or at an Ice Hockey Match could not be committing any offence because they are not at a football match.
Those issues were not and have not been argued to my knowledge.
Carloway, dismisses the appeal on the very narrow grounds that a judge had already ruled that this song was offensive and so suggests that he is bound by that decision and can’t interfere with it.
He then goes on to say that the legislation is the legislation and that if you sing offensive stuff at a football match this act says you will be convicted.
Ignorance of the law is never a defence in court — Ignorantia Non Fit Inuria — and that the two guys concerned should have known about the legislation and realised that in Scotland the law says that singing that song leads to a breach of the act.
Unspoken — it is accepted that this will not be the case anywhere else in Europe and it will not be the case anywhere other than at a football match.
He makes no comment on whether that is sensible or not.
It is a judgement that does not resolve all issues with the legislation and which in many ways allows the detractors and critics of the legislation to cite the judge’s own words when ridiculing the act, its intended effects and its practical implications and operation.
I hope the lawyers for the two guys concerned take the judgement to a higher level — and yes sometimes judges write a judgement in the full knowledge, indeed hope, that it is reviewed higher up the judicial chain and that the effect of the judgement is considered by the legislators and their advisors.
I have no idea if that is what is intended here.
Outwith the rarefied and artifical world of the courts of law, the act remains a bad tool, a poor piece of draftsmanship and an inevitably flawed piece of legislation and thinking which will repeatedly fail to meet its intended goals.
Separately, it has been, and will be, used wrongly, poorly and unlawfully by the Police Authority from time to time. That Police authority has become statistics driven, policy lead, dogmatically obstinate in its approach and is viewed as increasingly above the law in its implementation of such poorly drafted legislation.
The dominant head of that Police Organisation is due for retiral and there may be new thinking from a new police chief in early course — Maybe!
How you change this law is not something that is solely decided within the walls of court. However Judges should be speaking out in plain terms when asked to deliberate on the legislation concerned especially if it is flawed in its legal terms and implementation.
The narrowness of the remit in this case allows Lord Carloway to duck various issues yet leaves the door open for further legal challenge.
However, what all the lawyers, politicians, policemen, football authorities, journalists, commentators, bloggers and football supporters should always remember is that resorting to the law and the courts is an act of last resort – absolutely last resort.
The very fact that the conduct of football fans is the subject of such specific and supposedly detailed legislation means that football, football fans and society in general has failed and has been failed.
There has to be a better way than this.
“I’m lying flat oot with a bad back….”
Jamesgang,
That’s nothing…Celtic have four.
Eddiefitzgerald csc :)
We barely have one striker worthy of the name let alone two.
BRTH
I was just going to say that :)))))
Brilliant as usual sir :)))
Off with the head of the snake,
Auldheid
I find part of what you are saying weak.
Ogilvie was reappointed to his position unopposed.
Celtic put up no objection.
If they wanted rid of him they could simply have opposed his reappointment.
TT