On This Day in 2010: SFA fail in bid to import referees

IT was not the news the Scottish Football Association wanted to hear.

As talks with representatives of the referees union seem no nearer to preventing the planned strike from taking place this weekend, the SFA's requests to other associations to send replacements have been almost universally turned down.

The SFA had canvassed a plethora of European governing bodies in an effort to secure emergency officials should their own referees refuse to budge. A deadline of midday today has been set before the SFA will turn their efforts to enact 'contingency plans'. This week these have revolved around the ability to garner foreign imports, but this has - somewhat predictably - been unsuccessful, with referees of other associations choosing to stand by their Scottish colleagues.

"Every association should manage their own situation," said Uno Tutk, head of referees at the Estonian FA. "If they can't do that then that is bad. I am surprised by what I hear.

"As a UEFA observer I have seen Scottish referees such as William Collum, Dougie McDonald and Alan Muir in recent years and from my point of view they have had no problems. They get appointed to lots of games so they must be well thought of. Scotland has a long tradition in football and have had great referees in the past like Hugh Dallas.

"Our league season ended last weekend. Estonian referees have a closing meeting next weekend and all the top referees will be there. I don't see any possibility of sending them over and anyway I think they would support their colleagues in Scotland. But there has been no official contact."

These sentiments were repeated by the Welsh FA, who issued a statement which read: "It has now been decided that no Welsh officials will travel to Scotland this weekend to officiate in any SPL matches. After consultation with available officials, the decision has been taken for them not to officiate in Scotland."

Swedish officials last night said they had not been approached but that they would be unlikely to offer assistance. The same is true for Norwegian and Danish referees, while those in Iceland and Northern Ireland had ruled themselves out earlier this week.

"My position is that there will be no Danish refs flying to Edinburgh to officiate in the Scottish Premier League," said Per Bo Christensen, President of the Danish Football Union. "Scotland must cope with their problems themselves. One day, we could be in a similar situation here at home and if that were the case, we would have to find a solution ourselves.

"We came close to a strike ourselves many years ago and there was talk of bringing in Polish referees to games in Denmark. It wasn't popular and so I can't imagine Danish referees would want to go to Scotland."

Informal discussions are thought to have been made with representatives of the Irish FA, but conscripting Irish refereeswould be a controversial move. It is one which has not received an encouraging response in any case.

There is some good news for Stewart Regan, the SFA chief executive, though, after three Dutch referees were cleared by their association to take charge of matches in Scotland this weekend. Jan Wegereef, Ruud Bossen and Ben Haverkort are not officiating in their own country and look the most likely candidates to be offered to the SFA should Scottish referees carry out their strike action.

The proposed referees' strike will not affect Sunday's ALBA Cup final between Queen of the South and Ross County after both clubs were assured the McDiarmid Park showdown will definitely go ahead.

The match was in doubt due to the planned industrial action by officials but the first division sides were informed yesterday that the match will go ahead, even if referees down their whistles this weekend.

Kenny Brannigan, the Queen of the South manager, said: "I've not got a clue where the referee will be from or who it is but we've been told that the game is going ahead."