I came home on Sunday night after poring over footage of Allan McGregor kicking out at Kristoffer Ajer for Sportscene, and my wee boy asked me ‘are you allowed to do that?’ I replied that no, you certainly are not, but with the SFA’s shambolic disciplinary process it appears we are now telling our youngsters that it is ok to kick somebody on the pitch.

I just can’t get my head around how they arrived at that decision. McGregor has kicked out at an opponent off the ball, in an Old Firm game of all matches with the unbelievable scrutiny that goes with it, and he has got away with it. It couldn’t be more ridiculous.

I have seen people trying to explain the reasoning behind the decision, saying that the incident didn’t exhibit brutality or excessive force, but what are we saying here? That it will take somebody to whip out a baseball bat and smash somebody in the face with it before the referee can send them off? That’s an obvious exaggeration, but they aren’t exactly setting the line a million miles away from that now before someone can be sent off for striking an opponent.

What do they mean by brutality? Brutality to me is something out of a crime novel, setting somebody on fire or pulling their fingernails out. That’s brutality, and brutality just doesn’t happen on a football pitch.

The precedent has now been set that it is ok to kick out at an opponent by the SFA overturning Alfredo Morelos’s red card at Aberdeen and by refusing to sanction McGregor as well as Stevie Naismith for his kick out against Celtic.

Then you look at the Mikey Devlin red card and the Gary Dicker dismissal not being overturned, and you are left scratching your head as to how these decisions are reached. It is shambolic.

I have heard the argument for Devlin’s red card that the SFA can’t consider the lead-up to the incident, and so had to disregard the pull on his jersey from Eamonn Brophy. But hold on a minute, wasn’t the rationale behind the Morelos red card being overturned that he was provoked by Scott McKenna? That blows that out of the water. You can’t have it both ways.

Every time I have looked at one of these decisions since the season started, studying them multiple times and leaning on the experience I have of playing the game for 20 years, I have come to the opposite conclusion to the SFA. I am left wondering if it is maybe me, but it seems that the SFA are completely out of step with the majority opinion too on every single incident.

If it is me and the majority of punters that are calling these wrong, then we are entitled to know not only who is making these decisions at the SFA, but how they are arriving at these conclusions. Because they run contrary to what most people would understand to be the laws of the game. It’s mind-boggling.

Why is there full anonymity for the three grade one referees coming to these decisions? Who are they, why do they think these incidents are red cards or they aren’t? Clarity over these issues is all that people want and all the supporters of Scottish football deserve.

Just because the SFA say that three grade one referees have come to this decision and they have done their due diligence, we just have to accept that? No way. Not when they are leaving so many grey areas and such a vacuum that will only be filled by punters thinking they are biased against their team.

The SFA are leaving themselves wide open to get slaughtered from every angle right now, and chief executive Ian Maxwell should be recognising this. He was held up as being the football man coming in to sort this sort of thing out, and if he does know football, then he has to be stepping in and saying; ‘hold on a minute, we are making ourselves look like clowns here.’

What they should do is get three former players or managers in, people who have been in the game a long time and understand it, and then maybe we’d see a bit of reason being introduced to what is a joke of a procedure as it stands.

AND ANOTHER THING…

I have followed the Scotland women’s team’s journey over the last two years closely. I was at the Euros in Holland last year and I have been with them every step of the way since Shelley Kerr took over from Anna Signeul.

You have to give them enormous credit for the achievement of reaching the World Cup for the first time. Shelley Kerr deserves a lot of praise, because Scotland didn’t look ready at the Euros a year ago, but she has brought an extra dimension to the side.

The game has grown in terms of visibility and this can only help too. They had a record crowd of 4098 at the game against Switzerland a couple of weeks ago, and they have come on leaps and bounds.

Only four of the Scotland squad play their football here at a part-time level, the rest are either down south or abroad playing professionally with the very best of facilities and sports science. That has allowed our women to cast off the disdain in which the game was held in widely up here and prove that it deserves to be taken seriously.

It would be great if qualification to the World Cup can act as a springboard to attracting further investment and sponsorship so that one day we can have professional teams of our own in Scotland.

But for now, the team and the manager should be delighted with what is an unbelievable achievement. They have done the country proud.