Gary Mackay: No surprise bosses are fed up with Hugh's mini-mes and his army of mini-mes are ignorant, just like him

My suspicions were proved correct when Jim Jefferies found himself irked by his treatment from referee Willie Collum at Parkhead on Saturday, and I have to say I have every sympathy with our manager on this one.

I've never ever been a fan of Hugh Dallas, who is currently in charge of our referees.

Referees like David Syme and Brian McGinlay were always well-respected and allowed you to have a bit of communication, but I always found Dallas to be an ignorant individual. The worrying thing for me is that in his role as head of referees he seems to be developing a host of mini-mes - referees who are like him in the respect that they have no people skills when it comes to dealing with players or those on the touchline.

I can forgive genuine refereeing mistakes, which happen all the time in games, but to treat people with a blatant disregard, which appears to have been the case on Saturday, is not acceptable and the SFA have to act on it.

There should be some kind of open forum for these matters. We appear to be living in the dark ages in terms of the running of Scottish football. We have that many people doing different jobs, but it seems some of the people making the major decisions in our game just don't have the skills required to do what is right. This is reflected in the fact we have referees who don't know how to interact with people on the football field. Too many teams in Scotland seem to be having problems with referees these days - there has to be a greater understanding from refs about what is at stake in a game of football and the pressure these managers are under.

As I said before, I was concerned when I saw our owner's comments in the paper, especially coming as it did in the week leading up to a game at Celtic Park. I'm not saying the fact all the big calls seem to have gone against Hearts was directly related to Vlad's comments, but sometimes you reap what you sow and I don't think his outburst was well-advised. Ultimately, the people who suffered from any dodgy refereeing decisions on Saturday were the fans who paid their money to go through to Glasgow as well as the players and management - not Mr Romanov. When you're not as hands-on as you maybe should be, sometimes you've got to be careful when you open your mouth.

Nonetheless it was a decent performance from Hearts on Saturday and, as I said before, it's November time when the league starts to take shape so I won't be reading too much into our results just yet. We now head up to Inverness, where we have a decent record, and they don't seem to be as strong at home as they have been on their travels, so it's as good a place as any to try and bounce back from our defeat to Celtic. It's also a good day out for the fans into the bargain!

Elsewhere, the news about Lee Wallace is obviously hugely disappointing, primarily for the player himself, but thankfully the damage is not as bad as first feared. Hearts can ill afford to lose players of his quality for any length of time, particularly because it looks like we're going to be without Marius Zaliukas. I've spoken to Lee and he was obviously very low in the immediate aftermath of the injury as it looked like he could be out for the best part of a year.

But by Thursday he had perked up when he learned he might only be out for three or four months - it was a huge boost for him.

He's a resolute lad and he'll work hard to bounce back to the level which got him into the Scotland squad in the first place.

It's obviously a huge disappointment for him that he'll miss out on the game in the Czech Republic and also at home to Spain, the world champions, and I'm sure I speak for every Hearts supporter in wishing him a speedy recovery.

Gruelling, but worth it

I SPENT yesterday taking part in the Glasgow to Edinburgh cycle with a group of people from Harmeny School.

I have to say it is probably as hard an individual task as I've ever done in my life. We cycled the back roads from Glasgow Green to Victoria Park in Edinburgh and it really was gruelling stuff.

Full credit to everyone who took part - it looks like we've raised a good few quid for charity.