David Martindale looked back at two recent incidents in which Livingston have been denied penalties for handball and declared: “We need full-time referees.”
The Lions were denied at Rangers recently and again at home to Kilmarnock on Saturday and Martindale revealed that he received a call on Monday from William Collum, a former referee and now head of referee operations at the Scottish Football Association.
Collum apologised for Saturday. He previously apologised for the Ibrox incident and Martindale, whose side are in desperate need of points as they prop up the 12-strong William Hill Premiership, is looking for a rub of the green. The non-award v Killie he described as “monumental”.
He told the media: “I do not have a problem with Willie. He came on the phone and was really honest. Really, really sorry, we missed it, I do not know why we missed it, we should not have missed it, sorry. I don’t think it is a Willim Collum problem, I do not think it is just an officials problem, I think it has a Scottish football problem. We need to find solutions very quickly.”
Referring to the incident at Ibrox, he said he took the apology from Collum and moved on, but another incident surfaced in the 1-1 draw with fellow-strugglers, Kilmarnock, at The Home of the Set Fare Arena on Saturday.
Martindale (pictured at Easter Road by Ian Jacobs) said: “The VAR officials felt it was not necessary for the referee to look at the monitor. I was on the touchline very animated with the fourth official and I am being told to sit down otherwise you will be sent off.
“For us that was a monumental opportunity. I appreciate Willie (Collum) phoning, I really do, but it is not really worth anything. I have been through this eight weeks ago and we do it again. It is really hard to get your head around.”
He questioned why clubs pay “hundreds of thousands of pounds” for VAR. Livingston officials later confirmed that it costs them around £18,000 for VAR technology every game.
Martindale added: “We need to get better at this. The only way we are going to make this better, and I believe this, is making it (refereeing) full-time. If you had a full-time team and a part-time team over the season the full-time team would make better decisions over the course of that season .
“They are going to be fitter, they are going to be stronger, because that is their full-time job, that is their full-time focus.”
Martindale believes that authorities need to start phasing out double-jobs, as many officials have well-paid positions in their daily jobs, but the salaries on offer, he argued, would attract.
He added: “There are six games in the top flight and five games in the champ (championship), that is 11. Why don’t we have a bank of 13 or 14 full-time referees? The part-time referees could referee the part-time leagues.”
