SFA head of referees 'confident' officials won't be story of season

13 hours ago 1

Scottish FA head of refereeing Willie Collum has told Sky Sports he is "confident" the officials will not be the story of the new season.

The former category one referee, who is preparing for his second season in the post, has spent the summer visiting all 12 Scottish Premiership clubs as well as many in the lower leagues of the SPFL.

Collum's aim when he replaced Crawford Allan in July 2024 was to improve "the operation and delivery of VAR" and help "alleviate the unsustainable burden" on officials.

Willie Collum believes refereeing standards have improved

He introduced a VAR review show last season to give more transparency and admitted mistakes were made, but he believes there has been real progress.

"I think everybody would agree there's always going to be exceptions, but particularly in handball we made good ground, the 46-year-old told Sky Sports News.

"I said a year ago at this time we would come to a more football understanding of handball and I think there's been less controversial handballs given.

"You will still get outliers, that'll happen. They'll happen again this season and we need to deal with them as we go, but we definitely want a more consistent approach.

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A Celtic goal was disallowed at Hibs last season, a decision Willie Collum admitted was wrong

"We also want to avoid any of the errors which are difficult to explain.

"Everybody understands subjective decisions and difficult decisions. What we want to avoid is decisions where when everybody's looking at it, they don't understand why we've reached that decision."

Collum, who was the last Scottish referee to officiate at a major finals at Euro 2016, insists officials are open to learning from others when it comes to implementing the laws of the game.

"We're in a good place. We feel on the same page with the clubs as well, which is really, really important and I'm confident," he added when questioned on his officials not being the story of the new season.

"We're pretty much 99 per cent there with the clubs and decisions. The decisions that maybe we're not on the same page, we've listened to our stakeholders, we've listened to the clubs, we've listened to the coaches.

"I think it's really, really important to have good relationships with an open door policy to engage with the clubs, with the players. Also, to learn from them.

"I think that's important, that we need to be open to learning from other people as well.