Celtic incident shows SFA need to change their policy
By StevieMac
It was a horrible tackle on Jeremie Frimpong of Celtic, rightly criticised heavily by all bar the referee and the Motherwell manager. Could it have attracted a higher punishment?
There have been lots of comments about Devante Cole’s horror tackle on Jeremie Frimpong at the weekend. Having watched the video it’s hard to understand what referee Andrew Dallas saw. At first it looked as if he was waving play on having not noticed any offence and only came back for a foul when the Dutchman’s obvious agony brought home some of the severity.
Many critics, including former Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher have commented after the game and struggle to see how it should be anything other than a red card. Motherwell manager Stephen Robinson has added his own defence of Cole, along the lines of nice lad, no malice, wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Malice and intent are sometimes part of what makes a red card, but an offence can still be a red and sending off without either. And that comes into play more significantly afterwards too. It’s important to note that by issuing a yellow card Dallas has indicated that he has seen something. That too remains highly significant.
Could the Scottish Football Association Compliance Officer have called for the tackle and soft yellow card to be looked at again and submitted to an SFA Judicial Panel? The common understanding, often quoted, is that if an offence has been seen and dealt with at the time by the referee then it can’t be taken any further. The Dallas yellow card indicates seen and dealt with.
The rules on Judicial Panels do seem to offer a bit more scope to follow this up. It being already seen by officials is indeed stated. The rules allow for the Compliance Officer to raise a Fast Track Notice of complaint for serious foul play in exceptional circumstances, where some of the exceptional aspect of the offence wasn’t seen by match officials.
The rules seem pretty clear on defining what exceptional might mean and include:
"“the level of excessive force used was very high; and/orthere was malice used in making the challenge and/or that there was an intent to injure; and/orthe level of endangerment of safety was very high; and/orsignificant injury occurred as a consequence of the challenge.”"
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Even if you rule out malice and intent when it comes to Cole, the other factors may well apply in this instance. But it would need the match officials to admit there were unseen factors. That’s probably where the flaw in the review process lies.
Calling it into a Judicial Panel could have shown the SFA avoiding being seen to condone such tackles being only given a yellow in other games and helping to protect players. It would allow Dallas to state what he saw or didn’t see. Only he will know what that was and how his mind worked at the time. Without a review how does anyone know what is allowed and what isn’t in tackles like this?
Perhaps the SFA may feel there is no ongoing point to be made, no error made or don’t see a risk to player safety and that signalling a yellow card was appropriate and backing their official. That would not be surprising.
Even if it had been referred, the loss of a player for other matches does nothing to help Celtic in Sunday’s game nor does it heal any injury. It just might though have added a warning to others and provide helpful guidance to referees in punishing dangerous tackles in the future.