CHARLIE Richmond, the former Grade One official, last night revealed that he would have sent off Alfredo Morelos for an accumulation of yellow card offences if he had been in charge during Saturday’s Old Firm match – but insisted the compliance officer’s hands were tied when it came to taking retrospective action because by the rulebook it wasn’t a “clear and obvious refereeing error”.

Scottish refereeing is back under the microscope this morning after Celtic issued a strongly worded statement in relation to John Beaton’s handling of the match. It comes at the mid-point of a season where criticism of match officials has been a familiar refrain. Rangers were recently sanctioned for a strongly-worded statement about Willie Collum, while Hearts and Aberdeen are two clubs leading the charge for implementation of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) system, with an SFA summit on refereeing as a whole scheduled for later this month.

Richmond, who stepped down after 12 years as a Grade One official in 2012, insisting he had been frozen out for not “sucking up” to his bosses, is in favour of implementing VAR on a limited trial basis on the later part of the season, but insisted there were no guarantees that it would have resulted in a different outcome to that on Saturday. While Morelos appeared to aim a kick at Scott Brown, caught Anthony Ralston with his studs and seemed to grab at Ryan Christie, referee Beaton saw and was happy with how he dealt with all three incidents, leaving no room for the compliance officer to take any action.

“Whether we think John Beaton has dealt with it correctly or incorrectly, as soon as the compliance officer gets in touch with the referee and says ‘has he seen it?’ and he says ‘I am happy with how I dealt with it, then the compliance officer has no room to move,” Richmond told Herald Sport. “John Beaton might get phoned by the refereeing department to say ‘well, you’ve seen the incident but in hindsight do you feel you have deal with it’, but as soon as he says ‘I’ve seen it and I’m happy with the way I dealt with it’, that’s it. What you don’t want is the compliance officer to come in and re-referee the game. Then you open up a massive can of worms.

“I don’t think the incidents treated individually are three red cards,” he said. “But if you look at the three incidents individually, me personally, I think the first one is worthy of a yellow card. It is reckless and dangerous, Scott Brown has gone in and won the header then got in front of him. He wants to win the second ball but Scott Brown can’t miraculously disappear so what is Morelos doing?

“As for the second one I don’t think he is guilty of violent conduct, John Beaton might have thought he made a genuine attempt to avoid standing on the player [Ralston]. But is the player being fly? In that instance you might look at it as being a warning. The other one is just a flick out, so individually it might be another warning but the fact you have warned him for the previous one, the two together could be another yellow card.

“So I would have handled it differently to John Beaton. You’ve got to look at the number of fouls, etc, etc, you are looking at it in the game scenario, so you can’t look at them individually. I would say the first one was a yellow card, and the second two combined would have resulted in another yellow and therefore a red card.

"You can’t just go on being petulant and petulant. If a player gets yellow carded early in the game or no matter when it happens the emphasis must pass to the player to be responsible for his actions. But again the compliance officer cannot go back and say 'even though the referee has seen it, I think this or that'. Then you totally undermine why the referee is there in the first place.

“How many referees in a room of 30 would have said 'I am happy with a public warning for the first incident?' I’m happy with a yellow card and I think most of the others would be. I don’t think any of the referees would have given a red card and John Beaton might have been the only guy who thinks it is worthy of just a free kick and nothing else.

“But what you have to go back to with the procedure side of things is that the compliance officer must see a clear and obvious refereeing error. An opinion is not up for debate. And these are opinion decisisions. Is there are a clear and obvious refereeing mistake? No, because he has given the free kick, seen the incident and seen to have dealt with it. It is tied in with the articles of association and the wording of it.”

Complicated stuff all this, even if it leaves the impression of referees ‘marking their own homework’. Even more complicated, perhaps, is what reforms could be brought in at this summit or any other meeting to sort it all out. But Richmond for one reckons that Scottish football thumbing its nose at VAR will see them on the wrong side of history. Even if it means opting for a more budget form of VAR than some systems worldwide and enduring a few teething problems along the way. The only way the Morelos example would have been overturned would have been for the VAR referee to insist a clear and obvious mistake had been made, that one of the individual instances should have been a red card, and drawn it to Beaton’s attention. He could still then have insisted he was correct all along.

“When you start off with any system you are not going to get it all singing, all dancing, 100% all the time,” he says. “The question should be ‘where do we start? One or two TV cameras. It is like when you are buying a new car, a 1.1 Corsa or a 3.2 Jaguar. The 1.1 Corsa will still take you from A to B. BT Sport have said they are happy to provide the footage. When you trial things there are going to be teething problems and issues but VAR is also governed by what you can look at? Just goals, penalty decisions, red cards, goals being offside or not.

“What kind of broadcasting system do we have? We can’t have three or four guys with mobile phones. What they will sit round the table and discuss is what level can we get. If it clears up the scenario that penalties given which shouldn’t be given. Goals that are offside, when you’ve got something like that, yes we should be using it. What it’s the budget in the coffers.

“Why shouldn’t we trial it this season? If the SFA write to Uefa and say we are going to trial this system then they will get their backing, because Uefa and Fifa are making a major push on it. It WILL come. It is not a matter of IF, it is a matter of when. You saw that in the World Cup. We are already having VAR seminars for referees in Europe. Everybody needs to throw their hat in the ring, and be aware that there will be teething problems, and just cope with them. Let’s see if we can make things better.

“One thing VAR would have been a brilliant intervention for was the League Cup final when Andrew Dallas awarded a penalty,” he added. “When you had a replay back at it, you would have seen it all. He would have waved away the penalty award. I would have turned round and said it is not a penalty and not even a free kick so you would restart the game with a drop ball. But that is a one in a million incident where it would have worked perfectly.”