Alan Pattullo: Chief executive must be wary of being drawn into every controversy

Published on Friday 29 October 2010 21:57

STEWART Regan was spotted dashing for the lift at Hampden Park with a sandwich snatched from the downstairs cafeteria on Thursday, as the new chief executive of the Scottish Football Association came to the end of his investigation into Dougie McDonald's now notorious penalty decision at Tannadice 13 days ago.

The inquiry has lasted a week and ended without any action being taken, despite McDonald having been found to have misled the referee observer Jim McBurney after the match between Dundee United and Celtic. It leads other observers, those looking in from the outside at the messy, prolonged inquest being played out on the sixth floor at Hampden, wondering what exactly was the point?

McDonald is found to have done wrong in telling a mistruth to McBurney, and yet is cleared. He is also found to have "ultimately arrived at the correct decision" with regards to the penalty, which many considered was the case in the immediate aftermatch of the game itself - nearly a fortnight ago.

Most people did not need to carry-out interviews with all the major protagonists involved to reach this judgment. But now a week-long inquiry has ruled that McDonald was right to confer and seek second opinion from his assistant referee, Steven Craven.

If McDonald was biased against Celtic, he wouldn't have given the penalty in the first place. There is no evidence that, during the match, he did anything more sinister than take the honest step when in doubt of placing his judgment at the call of another, and then accepting the word of that witness as reliable.

There have been far more glaring mistakes made by referees which have not been blessed with such a thorough investigation, which means Regan has set a possibly dangerous precedent. Any club will now believe they have the right to be treated to such a comprehensive review of what they believe to be a contentious decision. The inner workings of the SFA will grind to a halt, clogged up by letters politely requesting for some "clarification" about a judgment call made in good faith by a referee.

At least McDonald only spent a minute or so debating with Craven whether his penalty decision had been correct or not. It might have seemed like an age for those present at the game, and who were waiting with bated breath to discover whether the penalty was going to be awarded or not.

But in terms of time-wasting, it is Regan who deserves to see a yellow card flashed in his face after devoting one of his first weeks in office to such a lengthy probe.

The fledgling chief executive will be eating on the hoof a lot more if this is how he intends to spend his time, with more pressing issues surely needing the benefit of his time.The chances are that other such contentious refereeing decisions will be made this weekend, and then what? Does Regan again set in motion a chain of events such as we have seen in the last eight days, since news emerged that the chief executive was becoming personally involved in a row which has led to open season on referees.

It has escalated from what was essentially a fairly trivial matter, with Celtic having won the match in the end in any case. The wrong decision was made and then corrected. At the time. But yet it has still led to the SFA almost coming to a stand-still in a week when the third round of the Scottish Cup was drawn.

That's right, the cup which still doesn't have a sponsor.