Rows over referees and their decisions have bedevilled Scottish football for as long as I have been watching the game. The current furore over the man who is recognised as the country's top official, Hugh Dallas, is therefore nothing new, except for the weekend revelations that Celtic have had his actions during last season's Premier League decider examined - along with the rest of the match - by a top behavioural psychologist.

It seems that the Parkhead club are intent on carrying on a vendetta against Dallas. They asked that he should be banned from handling the last Old Firm game. Now come these ill-timed revelations as the two Glasgow giants look towards two games in March which could potentially settle this year's title race.

The Scottish Football Association and the Scottish Premier League should stand firm behind Dallas no matter how much further pressure is heaped on him and on them.

Some time in the mid-sixties, a referee called Jim Callaghan was also the victim of a witch hunt after failing to send off the Celtic forward John Hughes in an Old Firm game at Ibrox. If memory serves me correctly, Hughes had been cautioned and then committed another foul which might have merited another booking and, inevitably, an ordering-off. Callaghan took no action and in the fury which followed he found himself in trouble with the refereeing authorities.

Now the man might have made a mistake - though that was debatable - but no more than that. To read anything else into the decision was wrong then, just as it is now with Dallas. Too many people on either side of the Glasgow divide see faults in referees which they possess themselves. In essence, their bigotry poisons their views.

Hence Celtic supporters hiring private investigators to follow referee Jim McCluskey some years ago because a rumour had been started saying McCluskey was a member of the Orange Lodge. The fact that no such evidence was found did not deter some supporters from remaining convinced that the allegations were correct.

Similarly with Dallas. Rumour after rumour has been concocted to suggest he is anti-Celtic. However, you would find it very difficult to convince St Johnstone supporters of that after the Parkhead team's result at McDiarmid Park this season.

Essentially, referees are human, and all of them can make mistakes. They have to act with immediacy, while rerun after rerun on television allows the rest of us to sit in judgment at our leisure. That should always be taken into consideration when examining a decision which has gone wrong. There is no hiding place for a match official and he makes his mind up instantly.

As I pointed out earlier, the accusations of bias come from both sets of Old Firm supporters, as well as fans from every other club in the country, who insist that every referee backs both Old Firm clubs. When Jim Callaghan was practically hounded out of the game it was something which shamed the whole of Scottish football, and if the campaign against Dallas is allowed to continue then we will have learned nothing from the sad and soiled days of more than 30 years ago. If we are to progress, then clubs must show an example to the support. Decisions have to be accepted because the laws of the game state that the referee's verdict is final. To depart from that would send the game spinning into anarchy.

Complaints can be made through the proper channels if clubs feel that necessary, but the hiring of a psychologist, and then making his views public, are not what the game needs. And, further, to infer that a gesture by the referee provided provocation for the coin-thrower who injured the match official is nonsense.

There is no excuse for hooligan behaviour. No case for provocation can be made for anyone mindless enough to hurl a coin on to the field of play, knowing that serious injury could be the result of such reckless, criminal action.

To suggest otherwise is dangerous.

Celtic's chief executive Allan MacDonald, in doing so, could well be construed as bringing the game into disrepute. I hope the authorities don't treat this affair in that manner, though a quiet word in MacDonald's ear may stop this very obvious campaign against Dallas, whose performances have impressed UEFA and FIFA as well as the men who run the Scottish game.

It was wrong that Celtic asked Dallas to be relieved of his duties before the last Old Firm game. It is scandalous that this latest psycho-babble - all of it taken from watching videos - should have been made public, with parts of it being highlighted in such a way as to damage the referee.

Let there be an end to it.