I wasn’t even going to bother writing about the shambolic performance of referee Kenny Clark in Saturday’s Edinburgh derby at Tynecastle, as frankly I’m sick to the back teeth having to sound like a broken record week after week because of the nonsense that our team is having to put up with these days.
But it’s been interesting today to read how some of the papers have been reporting on the match today – at long last they would appear to be acknowledging what we have been witnessing for nigh on two years now and are publicly speaking out against it, which is encouraging.
Clark’s display on Saturday was possibly the most biased I have seen since John Underhill ‘took control’ of this fixture just over two years ago at Easter Road. I often hear it said that these guys are just incompetent rather than malicious in their mistakes, but how many can you accept before the former surely becomes the latter? Can a referee really get as many decisions wrong and in favour of the same side and still be taken seriously as an impartial match official? I suppose it’s difficult to determine, especially as very often Clark was relying upon two assistants who refused to get involved at any stage on Saturday despite having clear views of several incidents that caused controversy, but surely question marks have to be put against these guys when it’s as obvious as this?
If you’re still not convinced, let me quote you a little excerpt from this morning’s Daily Ranger in support of the theory that Hearts are indeed getting a raw deal from Scottish match officials. Please also bear in mind whilst reading it that this particular publication does not exactly enjoy a fantastic relationship with our club:
‘This team (Hearts) don’t get penalty kicks when they deserve them. Not any more. Not when their Lithuanian contingent is involved. This team don’t get fouls outside the box when they have been felled either but they do get bookings for diving even when they haven’t.
‘Now some might say that serves them right but it doesn’t. Two wrongs, three wrongs, four wrongs don’t make a right and at the moment Hearts are getting a raw deal.’
Now the Ranger is looking at this from the anti-Lithuanian point of view i.e. because of Mikoliunas’ dive at Hampden and Velicka’s cheating in the past, we are now having to reap what we sow, so to speak. Perhaps there is something in this and in the back of a referee’s mind they will picture what some of these players have done in the past and think they’re merely doing it again, rather than evaluating each case on its own merits. This would be human nature to a certain extent and is a possibility, but the sort of performance we saw on Saturday has been occurring on-and-off now for nearly two years. It started long before the Mikoliunas incident at Hampden and way before Andrius Velicka even joined the club.
In my opinion all of this started after Hearts took it upon themselves to question the integrity of the establishment after the infamous Andy Davis penalty incident when Hearts played Rangers at Tynecastle a short time into Romanov’s reign. Here was a single decision that enraged football fans the length and breadth of the country and Hearts, led by an owner not used to the perennial injustices that teams in Scotland experience against the Ugly Sisters, somewhat naively decided to make a big issue of it. The result? The SFA came down on them like a ton of bricks and the large majority of media hacks, clearly not wanting to upset some of their most important sources, did likewise. They made Hearts out to be suffering from the same paranoia that had infected Parkhead since the dawn of time and because most football fans in Scotland tend to form their opinions based on what they are told by the likes of The Sun or the Ranger, it became a common belief that our club was now completely paranoid and run by an insane dictator, hence names like ‘Mad Vlad’ and the like.
But now some of these same reporters would appear to be changing their tune slightly. Has it just gone too far now to the point of embarrassment? Are they genuinely just waking up to it now? Or are the journos now merely being given more licence to report honestly on what they are actually seeing? I really do hope it’s the latter, as injustices like this do need to be highlighted, even if it results in dire consequences for some of those working in the Hampden area. It can’t be allowed to continue or more and more customers will disappear from the Scottish game.
I wholeheartedly agree with today’s Scotsman’s sentiment on the issue, when they said that ‘this paper is loathe to repeat itself on any issue but until the begrudging attitude of Scottish officials towards Tynecastle is properly addressed there would appear little option’. Hopefully somebody somewhere who is in a position to take some action to correct these problems will do so…..and soon.
Share this article
Related Articles
I think it goes further back than that MrH. I think it goes back to when Levein decided to take on the SFA by refusing to pay an unjust fine, and won. The GFA have never forgiven Hearts for that. I agree though, its getting a bit ridiculous, although in all honesty, I thought Saturday’s refereeing performance was simply inept… he got decisions laughably wrong on both sides. Last week’s (particularly the Ruben Palazelous incident) was much more sinister.
If you are going to cheat (and let?s face it that?s what it is) under the glare of the TV cameras you have to be a bit more subtle than Mr Clark managed on Saturday. I think these remarks in the press might be a nod to the refs (and the SFA) to be a bit more artful and understated in their deception ? who knows who might be watching. There will also be a correlation between press interest in this and Hearts league position/likelihood of upsetting Rangers and Celtic in anyway. Since we are languishing in 10th place then it doesn?t do any harm to throw us a bone now and again ? for the good of the game you understand.
My turn to be naive perhaps but I do find it a bit difficult to believe that there is an active prejudice by the governing body against any club. I can believe that there is a bias towards Celtic and Rangers but the other is deeply sinister. Notwithstanding the awful display at the weekend, there’s a certain amount of blinkered viewing when discussing ref performance. I can recall the Dunfermline/Hearts cup match at East End last year (?) when I sat in the Dunfermline end (hospitality do – and very nice it was too!) their fans positively screaming at the ref and bemoaning that they always get bugger all when big teams come calling – all fans will have an understandably jaundiced view of proceedings. Back to Mr Clark though and interestingly a friend of mine was at some event a year or so ago (possibly at Eat End) where he (Clark) was the guest speaker and he actually made some very disparaging remarks about Hearts and Lithuanian players in particular. My friend contacted the SFA and got precisely hee-haw by way of response. Perhaps “Leviengate” and other incidents haven’t helped but it would indeed be a sad day if there was an definite anti-Hearts agenda. Sad for other clubs too as there for the grace of god etc….. What I would be interested to know is exactly what performance management arrangements are in place to ensure that refs continue to operate to acceptable standards and have the skills to do their jobs properly – bugger all I imagine.
maybe it,s just me but ,, dont you think that the officials ,, even occassionaly ,, take clubs disciplinary records into consideration ?
HEARTS = ,56 YELLOW ,, 8 RED
RANGERS = ,30 YELLOW ,, 1 RED
CELTIC = ,34 YELLOW ,, 0 RED
maybe if you tried playing fairly ,, you would be treated accordingly ! behaviour breeds behaviour ………
Maybe it’s just you who fails to realise that those responsible for who gets how many yellow and red cards are the people that we are criticising here WB?!
oh , Iv,e alway,s been well aware of that fact ,, but how many of the above would you judge to have been administered unfairly ,, or in blatent bias towards Hearts ( seriously ) ?
Difficult to say really – you tend to forget about games more than a week ago! I would say generally that in many games it’s been a case of Hearts players being booked for something that an opposition player wouldn’t have been though, with Velicka’s on Saturday being a perfect illustration.
fair enough ! I,ll pay more attention and see what the script is ! I always though that the officials should have booked Paul Elliot in the tunnel before kick off to save them the trouble later on when he played for us ,, he was hard as nails but not dirty and a lot of his bookings were totaly unjustified ,, maybe it,s just your turn !!
Its very tempting to join this ‘reaction bandwagon’, since we see things from a Hearts point of view. But as others have commented, fans of other teams can always find injustices too.
To prove that anything unjust (never mind corrupt) is happening, we’d have to be prepared to look at ALL key decisions in ALL matches in the SPL – penalties given/not given, reasons for bookings and examples of similar incidents NOT resulting in a booking, etc – and then look for patterns. Is there a bias towards/against certain teams ? Is there a statistical difference in how certain refs perform towards/against certain teams ?
And even if someone were to compile these stats, they would still be subject to personal opinion.
What would be interesting, though, is to know if the SFA currently do something like this already, as part of the review of referees performance – but perhaps never publish the results ?
Would be very interesting indeed to know that. I do agree that we’d need widespread and pretty clear evidence to prove that something sinister was going on, and that most of the time it’s just fans seeing things from their own side’s point of view. But even that said, Hearts really have been getting less than their fair share of decisions in recent years – maybe it will all ‘even itself out’ and we’ll go on an unbeaten run between now and 2010!
Specs Haver ! that was one thought provoking post to say the least ,, very interesting ! your final point in particular is most worthy of scrutiny ,, having cosidered the SFA to be inherently negligent of their duty to oversee a nation’s game ,, in fairness and without pregedous ,, I very much doubt that the results of such a compilation would in anyway shape or form be communicated to the very people upon who,s support they are totaly reliant ,, viper’s nest springs to mind !……… there is a classic song which encompasses your optimism Mr H ,, …… “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life ” ,, sometimes you have to !!!