The benefit of spinning to someone like Macintyre is that he isn’t going to question what he has been told and will loyally parrot out the required message without any follow up questions.
No one is asking the officials to disclose the team they support publicly.
It’s absolutely bizarre to defend supporters of a team refereeing their teams games. No matter how fair the refs are, it isn’t seen to be fair.
Rather than deal with the refereeing and security issues directly Celtic turned to their favourite tactic, telling their media pals how really really angry they were while knowing that neither Nicholson or Peter Lawwell would dare to say a word against the SFA.
Beaton was on VAR duty for Celtic’s defeat at Tynecastle a month ago, prompting Don Robertson to send off Yang Hyun-jun and award an outrageous penalty against Tomoki Iwata.
As soon as the SFA announced that David Dickinson would referee the match with Andrew Dallas on VAR duty the outcome of the fixture was almost guaranteed.
There has been rumours that the audio between Beaton and Robertson has been deleted, there will be fans that believe that version until they get to hear it for themselves, the silence on the issue is telling.
Very little detail has emerged from yesterday’s hearing, it isn’t known if the audio between the two officials was played and the reasoning for one match being suspended.
Any expectations of Celtic finally questioning the goings on at the SFA were ended by the clearly disappointed statement, the reaction from fans was 90% hostile with only a few claiming that the club had won the case and laid down a marker on the SFA.
If we truly believe the referees to be incompetent then we should not be accepting this decision. It should be appealed. The rule that you cannot challenge the competence of officials is perverse and should be changed.
It seems to have escaped them that the decision making of two leading referees contributed greatly to Celtic losing three vital SPFL points with Don Robertson and John Beaton given a free pass for their performances.