SFA chief weighs in on 'disgusting' reaction to Celtic penalty row as stance made on abolishing VAR

Spending an hour on the phone with a senior police official 24 hours after a contentious late penalty award led to a referee’s home address being leaked online is not such an enjoyable experience.

It is the darker side of the chief executive of the Scottish Football Association’s duties.

Maxwell has described the reaction to John Beaton’s decision to give a penalty to Celtic following a VAR check as “disgusting”. It’s notable he used the very word Derek McInnes, the Hearts manager, had chosen in reference to the decision in the emotive minutes after the title balance tilted very firmly in Celtic’s direction on the penultimate day of the league season.

Hearts now had to secure a result on the final day at Celtic Park while the hosts had the comfort of knowing a win would make them champions again. That game took place amid a febrile atmosphere following intense debate about the validity of the penalty awarded six minutes into time added on at Fir Park.

The reaction led to the personal security of Beaton and his family being compromised, meaning Maxwell had to alert police to the potential danger to one of Scotland’s top referees. The SFA also released a statement, describing the development as “a consequence of a hysterical media narrative, fuelled by irresponsible knee-jerk post-match media interviews, commentary and official social media posts”.

Maxwell has stressed it is the SFA’s responsibility to stand by such a robust statement.

“It was disgusting,” he said, when asked to reflect on the whole episode after the SFA agm on Thursday. “Honestly, I was absolutely raging. It is just not right, it is fundamentally not right. If anyone has played any sort of part….everyone has to look at every bit that makes that happen, every bit of media commentary, whether it is a statement from a club or a manager talking after a game or a player, there are a lot of bits that escalate to the point that someone says ‘I am going to stick a referee’s details online’. How anyone thinks that is acceptable is an absolute disgrace.”

“All we do is lambast referees from one day to the next,” he added. “It never stops.

“From the first day of the season to the last, all they do is get criticised.

“I can’t understand why anyone thinks that will make them go on to the pitch in a positive, sound, free frame of mind to make good decisions.

“VAR is working. It’s eradicating errors. But unfortunately we have a culture within Scottish football that just wants to focus on the negative and over-analyse and forensically analyse every decision that’s ever made.

“It doesn’t even need to be wrong. It just needs to be a decision you don’t like because it doesn’t suit your team. It’s about the colour of shirt your team is wearing.”

The chief executive was blunt when it was put to him that a growing number want VAR to be abolished. “It won’t happen,” he said. “Why would it happen? Everyone gets starry-eyed about the pre-VAR days. Why would we want to go back to a situation where we get more decisions wrong?

“It makes no sense. You can argue whether it is good or bad, or this one was right and this one was wrong, (but) the stats we have stack up against everyone in Europe in terms of the number of decisions we are getting right.”