​There's No Conspiracy Against Celtic, Scotland's Referees Are Just Shit

It didn't take long for the conspiracy theorist to start conspiring. With defeat to Inverness Caledonian Thistle in last Sunday's Scottish Cup semi-final, Celtic's hopes of clinching a treble of trophies this season were ended. If you were to believe some, Scottish football's hierarchy had got exactly what they wanted.

Post-match reaction to the result hasn't focussed on the Hoops' failure to make the final, nor the Highlanders' historic triumph, but on an unpunished handball by Inverness defender Josh Meekings. The 22-year-old stuck out an arm on the line to deny Leigh Griffiths a certain goal and Celtic a 2-0 second-half lead that surely wouldn't have been relinquished.

Whether Meekings handled the ball or not could never be doubted, with Inverness' official Twitter account even admitting the incident to be "a cracking save from Josh Meekings." But why had it been missed? That's what Celtic sought to find out in the following days.

Prompted by a bombardment of requests from their own fans, the Parkhead club wrote to the Scottish Football Association demanding answers and clarification. Some Celtic supporters had already conducted their own investigation, focussing on footage of refereeing assistant Alan Muir's reaction to the incident.

It was widely speculated that Muir had mouthed "hand, penalty, red" into the ear-mounted microphone system – the same kind worn by Britney Spears in the early 2000s – that Scottish referees are rigged up to. This directed scrutiny towards referee Steven McLean on the presumption that the man in the middle had ignored the guidance of his assistant. "Muir shouted it was a penalty. McLean is the cheat," one Celtic fan surmised on Twitter.

McLean stated in his match report that Muir told him Griffiths' header struck Meekings' head, but that did little to deter those searching for an underlying motive. An image of a pre-match handshake between McLean and Muir soon retweeted its way around social media, with some concluding it to be masonic – making both officials, of course, protestant Rangers fans. Obviously the plot to deny Celtic a Scottish Cup final place had been premeditated. Obviously.

Of course, it's important to highlight that most Celtic fans are embarrassed by those among them who cry conspiracy at every contentious decision dealt against their team, but significant sections of the club's support have long believed that those at the top of Scottish football hold a bias against their club.

It says something about the tedious toxicity of the sport in the country that fans of Glasgow rivals Rangers also believe the same thing to be true with regards to their club, following the Ibrox team's banishment from the top-flight three years ago.

But there is no deep-rooted conspiracy or grand bias against Celtic, or any other team. The Hampden Park corridors are not flanked by darkened rooms of plotting SFA blazers. In reality, Scottish referees are just shit. Really, really shit.

Of course, every fan in every country around the world believes their league's referees are the worst. Andre Marriner hardly boosted the repute of Premier League whistlers by sending off the wrong Arsenal player in a game against Chelsea last season, while Spanish Clasico derbies are often preceded by intense refereeing scrutiny from both sides of the rivalry's divide. But Scotland's referees truly are the worst.

Take Willie Collum, for instance. Teacher by day, referee by night, he is regarded by UEFA as Scotland's best middle-man, taking charge of the Champions League quarter-final clash between AS Monaco and Juventus just this week. His performance did little to quell concerns over the general standard of Scottish officiating.

"The refereeing?" Monaco coach Leonardo Jardim exhaled after a game that saw Collum make a number of contentious decisions, including a call not to award the home side a clear penalty. "I'm not going to talk about it. I'll leave it to the media to do that. But for a Champions League quarter-final not to depend on the quality of the players, that makes me sad. I'm sure UEFA aren't happy about that either." Jardim's gripes will have resonated with many of his Scottish football peers.

This was just another criticism to add to Collum's shameful roll call. "Everyone in the stadium could see it was a foul," complained Hibernian boss Alan Stubbs earlier this season after the referee failed to penalise Rangers full-back Lee Wallace for a blatant foul on one of his players in the build-up to a pivotal goal. "Decisions from the officials cost us," protested St Mirren manager Gary Teale following the dismissal of Kenny McLean in a New Year's Day game. The official in question was Collum, of course.

In fact, that decision marked a particularly inglorious week for Collum. McLean's red card was eventually overturned by the SFA's judicial panel, on the same day another red card for Motherwell's Stephen McManus – yup, another Collum decision – was also rescinded.

And Collum certainly isn't the only Scottish referee to have compromised his own competency in recent times, with Craig Thomson (another UEFA-recognised official) and John Beaton also renowned controversy-courters. There's an epidemic.

The SFA's judicial process has also come in for intense criticism this week, after Meekings was retrospectively hit with a suspension, thus ruling him out of next month's Scottish Cup final. In effect the governing body – or rather their compliance officer Tony McGlennan – had re-refereed the match, as is permitted by the rulebook in Scotland.

Using the Twitter hashtag #wearealljoshmeekings the defender was offered cyberhugs by everyone from players to supporters of his own club and rival teams. Many questioned the wisdom of the SFA's charge, before the defender was eventually cleared of deliberately denying a goal.

Jim Boyce, the head of FIFA's refereeing committee, was one such critic, stating that the SFA had set a "dangerous precedent" by taking retrospective action on an incident that had gone unpunished during the game. "There is no way the player should be disciplined now," he concluded.

Scottish football could be heading for the kind of scenario it was faced with back in 2010, when an unprecedented number of top-level referees went on strike following a dispute. It was the referees' belief that the SFA was not doing enough to protect them from undue criticism and questions over their integrity from clubs, much like they have faced this week from Celtic.

While Scottish refereeing has been an atrocious state for some time, football fundamentally needs its men in black. The drafting of foreign referees, something the SFA tried four years ago, is unfeasible in anything other than the short term. So how can confidence be restored in Scottish refs and the country's footballing judicial system?

Calls have been made for officials to declare their allegiances – which would only stoke what is already a blazing hot mess – but making a selection of top-level referees in Scotland full-time might be a good starting point.

The Scottish Professional Football League draws in a reported £15 million in television revenue every season, and yet it relies on part-time officials to referee its fixtures. Top-flight referees make £840 per match, with their Championship counterparts earning just £195 a game. Better pay wouldn't necessarily equate to better refereeing, but it would give officials a degree of professionalism that is missing at the moment.

In Scottish football, everything is complex. When Meekings stuck out an arm to block Griffiths' goal-bound header on Sunday the response was never going to be any less messy or drawn out than what has transpired. Everything – particularly when it comes to refereeing – is this way here.

But there is no conspiracy against Celtic. After all, would the SFA really want a clash between Inverness and Falkirk as its showpiece event? There isn't always a mutual exclusivity between incompetence and bias, but in this case there is.