Rangers rejoice as Willie Collum quits refereeing

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Rangers rejoice as Willie Collum quits refereeing
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - MAY 11: Match official Willie Collum arrives at the stadium prior to the Cinch Scottish Premiership match between Celtic FC and Rangers FC at Celtic Park Stadium on May 11, 2024 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

Rangers fans may be rather delighted to hear that long-term adversary Willie Collum will quit being a referee this summer, but they might not be quite as excited to learn he’s become the referees’ boss instead, replacing the outgoing Crawford Allan.

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The 45-year-old, who systematically covered up a massive error at Parkhead earlier in the season at Rangers’ expense, will be the SFA’s new Head of Refereeing, in a move we suspect Celtic fans will be rather pleased with.

We certainly have to laugh at SFA CE Ian Maxwell’s take:

“We were clear we would leave no stone unturned in getting the best candidate for a job that has become significantly more demanding with the arrival of VAR. It is to Willie’s great credit that he emerged as the outstanding candidate from such a strong international field.”

See, unlike most, we at Ibrox Noise don’t subscribe to paranoid theories that Collum is ‘one of them’, because even if he is, so what? We know referees have their teams, and in Scotland that invariably means they are likely to be Rangers or Celtic fans. If he’s a Celtic fan, then we don’t have a problem with that.

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We do have a problem with incompetency, and he’s absolutely 100% been guilty of that against Rangers, and if Maxwell thinks he’s the best man to be referee boss in this country, it either means the rivals for the position were literally abysmal, or he was the only guy willing to do it.

We can’t say it fills us with confidence that the boss of the country’s referees himself isn’t very good at refereeing and frequently makes bad calls (against and for everyone, especially Rangers).

Indeed, he’s quit his day job as an education officer to do this full time, so he will finally be full time employment in this field.

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And that’s one thing we’ve advocated – training the refs up to all be full time and less incompetent, but we guess that ain’t happening any time soon.

Que sera.

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