The Hunt for Willie Collum

A brief Honest Mistakes roundup before a rather squalid dive into what passes for mainstream Scottish football commentary

During game week 31 there were few incidents of note in matches involving the Glasgow sides, but for completeness I will include here.

After which, so you do not feel short changed, some musings on the current state of play regarding refereeing.

21/03/26 The Rangers vs Aberdeen

Incident 1

Referee: Matthew McDermid

Game Minute: 88^th

Score At Time: 3-1

Incident: Miovski scored for TRFC

Outcome: Goal disallowed by VAR for handball in build up

Evidence:

At 3:57

Yorkshire Whistler Verdict:

Miovski scores for Rangers

IOD: Goal disallowed by VAR for handball offence in the build up

As Aberdeen clear the ball it appears to hit Miovski accidental on hand and this contact then sees Rangers launch an attack that ultimately results in a goal.

The referee is totally unsighted to this contact as he has already spun his body around to avoid the ball hitting him from the Aberdeen clearance, so this is very much a case of VAR deciding if a handball offence has been committed.

It’s my opinion that this goal should not have been disallowed. The handball is clearly accidental, and I don’t believe the arm is unnaturally extended in way that should be penalised. After this accidental handball is initiated, the passage play goes on for another 18-20 secs approximately and another 5 Rangers players play the ball before it ends up in the goal. This is not an immediate goal directly scored after the accidental handball, which would have been grounds to disallow in that scenario.

Verdict: INCORRECT decision. I don’t feel the accidental handball was a punishable offence in this passage of play.

Expected Points Outcome: TRFC -0.05 xPts

Summary

My thanks, as always, to the Yorkshire Whistler.

The Ranges have been hampered by incorrect calls to the tune of -1.73 expected points, and Celtic -0.04 xPts.

After 31 matches, The Rangers lead Celtic by two points.

The Allan to Collum Transition

A temperature check on the overall state of play as regards the Yorkshire Whistler’s analysis and the outcomes arising.

The above summary position, with The Rangers -1.77 expected points worse off due to bad calls, is within what I would consider a reasonable margin of error. That is, we expect bad calls even in the age of VAR, and we hope that the impact of those bad calls is felt equally across all teams in the league.

Such an error differential equates to 0.06 expected points per game. Who remembers the 2009/10 season? Most weeks there were terrible decision that went one way as civic Scotland desperately tried to save Rangers from administration and then liquidation.

In the respect that the Patterns of Assistance (multiple points of evidence, every one statistically significant, illustrating that the Crawford Allan led refereeing fraternity favoured one team in Scotland) appears to be in abeyance. The Yorkshire Whistler analysis is only one small part of that.

The YW has been engaged since Allan’s second year in charge of refereeing. At worst, in 2022/23, the expected points impact of wrong calls was around six points – significant in what have been tight title races up to a point. Under Allan, Celtic always hampered, The Rangers relatively jeopardy free (the main manifestation of Allan’s Honest Mistake era).

Under Collum, the gaps are much tighter as you would hope. I’ll revisit all the metrics during the summer.

What is also noteworthy is the overall picture of decisions referred, and the degree to which the YW has ruled them errors.

The error rate was going down under Allan it is only fair to point out. VAR came in part way through his stewardship. But the error percentage rate has stabilised under Collum to 13%, which is much greater than the referees would claim, but much lower than under Allan. And the volume of errors is down on the back of fewer referrals.

None of which is to claim Collum has massively improved the overall standards. I suspect the single factor of attribution driving down errors is the use of VAR and the gradual improvement in its implementation. Which is difficult for us all to acknowledge in real-time, and impossible if your team is ever on the receiving end of a bad one, as all teams are.

Hence the need to track over the long term.

We now seem to be in a period where intrinsically the referees are still of a poor standard. This is an objective fact based on the lack of appointments for Scottish referees in the latter stages of European club competition, and at major UEFA and FIFA tournaments.

The referees are still parttime in a fulltime sport.

They continue to be disproportionately recruited from the west of Scotland. Of the 16 topflight whistlers, there are six from Glasgow, four from Renfrewshire, two from Edinburgh, and one each from Aberdeenshire, Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and Stirlingshire. Five of the 12 refereeing associations have no representatives in the topflight.

So, they are part timers, poorly equipped relative to European peers, and too narrowly selected from the population in Scotland, with too much emphasis on the west of Scotland.

BUT at least the relative incompetence is being dolled out broadly equally across the league!

The Hunt for Willie Collum

Collum has transformed how the Scottish referees interact with the public.

We now have a regular Youtube show, hosted by Sky TV and Gordon Duncan, where Collum goes through the major calls, and explains what went well and not well, including, crucially, the dialogue that occurs between the refereeing team.

This makes tremendously entertaining viewing but also a rod for their backs. It is easy to rail against similar mistakes (usually different referees and always slightly different contexts) and to bemoan airing dirty laundry in public. But consider the impact this has on the referees. No one in that community wants to be the inadvertent star in Wille’s next episode. The refs know each word and action is under intense scrutiny which, whilst adding to the pressure of a difficult job, should serve to, as the ol’ phrase goes, keep them honest.

The VAR/Youtube era has claimed it’s first victim in Alan Muir, he of “Face! Face!” fame as Josh Meeking’s punched the ball off the goal line at Hampden Park in a Scottish Cup Semi Final. Muir overstepped the line in terms of dubiety when disallowing a goal for Celtic at Hibernian despite no evidence being available the ball was out of play.

And whilst John Beaton seems to be able to re-referee games with impunity, the proof, as the YW has shown, is that in the main, whilst errors are still made, they tend to land randomly.

He has also allowed the independent panel of football “experts” verdicts on VAR decisions (the Key Match Incident Panel) be published in another step forward for transparency.

The initiatives should be applauded as brave and in the spirit of accountability, albeit outside of Muir, no one seems to particularly suffer for bad errors.

However, for certain constituencies, this is insufficient, and indeed to be weaponised and taken in bad faith as a stick to beat Collum in particular.

So, it is emerging that a “Sack Collum” narrative is growing amongst certain commentators.

Weird football “personality” Ewen Cameron is to the forefront on this. Here he openly calls for Collum “to go”.

The Heart of Midlothian baseball cap and tracky wearing media presence’s timeline is, to say the least, predictable. Every Monday in support of a STV football show he is on; he posts clips from the conversation to support the show. Those clips, and I only went back to the start of February 2026 before boredom set in, fall universally into two camps:

1. “Rangers wuz robbed”

2. “Celtic got away with one”

And they virtually all are concerned with refereeing calls. Barely a mention of his beloved Hearts.

Here is Derek Clark, a journalist with the mainstream The Rangers Review, railing against Collum in print. Clark can be relied upon to criticise referees in particular and Collum specifically in his content. Notice the wording “what a clown show the officiating HAS BECOME under Willie Collum” (my emphasis).

The clear implication is that it was not a clown show before. Perhaps Clark would rather like a return to the days under Allan, where his favourite team were on the “right” end of most of the calls?

Perhaps most distasteful is this, hosted by SM Media. We’ve had Scott on our show. He’s a good guy, and a fan of The Rangers. His SM Media channel produces lots of good content about Scottish football. He isn’t the issue here.

On this semi regular show, he has Steve Conroy and Des Roache from The Refs View social media account.

This latest episode sees the two former refs behave in a manner I can only describe using the old Scottish phrase “Sweetie Wives”. Imagine the worst excesses of 13-year-old playground bitching and you are nearly there. They have an appalling attitude to their ex-colleagues, even worse than the “we were better in our day” Manchester United Overlap pundits.

Compare and contrast with the professional manner of Collum and Duncan’s VAR Review Show. Whereas one might expect from former referees’ empathy, respect, professionalism, detachment, cool analysis, here you get nasty bitching. Collum is front and centre of their ire.

Roache quit topflight refereeing in January 2015, over 10 years ago. He was never one of the top referees and has no experience of operating VAR in a topflight match, in addition to being 10 years behind on implementing at the sharp end the changes to laws in that time.

Conroy retired in 2012 and was a similarly middle ranking official at his peak and is therefore three years further removed from practical experience.

None of this is to claim that Collum has revolutionised the performances of Scottish referees. Intrinsically, there are limits due to their parttime status. But he has lifted the veil of secrecy, and as such, referees are now openly held to account.

And it does appear he has levelled the playing field. I suspect it is this latter point, rather than any deep-seated grievance about “quality” that has stirred some of the mainstream commentariat.

Open criticism of Collum specifically and personally, and calls for his removal, are becoming common currency in certain quarters.

Good faith debates about how to improve Scottish refereeing remain in short supply amidst the personal attacks. Indeed, I hope The Rangers are supported by other clubs in their call to review how standards can be improved.

Meanwhile, Scottish football can be a squalid little world.