Scotland's Refereeing Crisis Deepens as Iceland Refuse to Help

This article was recently published on suite101.com

Iceland’s referees will not take charge of Scotland’s Premier League games this weekend.

The Icelandic referees association today voted unanimously to support their striking Scottish colleagues and to not answer pleas from the Scottish FA to referee this weekend’s SPL fixtures.

Sigurder Thorleifsson, head of Iceland’s referees association, had initially approved the proposal, but the union’s members emphatically decided not to travel to Scotland.

Kristinn Jakobsen was the first Icelander to referee a Champions League game, he told of solidarity amongst international referees.

“The referees all around the world are one team, so I think we are going on the same line.” He said. “I expect the same stance will be taken by officials in Ireland, Wales and Scandinavia.”


The Scottish referees strike is the culmination of a long period of tension between referees and the players and officials of football clubs. This came to a head on October 17th when referee Dougie Macdonald apparently changed his mind after awarding a penalty to Celtic at Dundee United, for a foul on Gary Hooper. The Bhoys came away with all three points at Tannadice, but this decision and a series of others have led to a general feeling of anger amongst Celtic’s players, staff and fans.

This bad feeling between referees and football clubs is in no way restricted to the Scottish Leagues- the Respect campaign in England was launched to combat increasing abuse of referees at all levels of the game- but many feel that the abuse suffered by Scottish refs is getting out of hand.

Former referee, Kenny Clark, told Channel 4 news that events in Scotland had reached crisis point;

“This goes far beyond criticism- it is now at the level of personal abuse”, he said. “And not only are referees fearful of their own safety, they are fearful of their families’ safety as a results of threats and emails they have received.”

The Scottish FA have said their meeting with Icelandic officials were part of a contingency plan and that they hope to resolve the issue in talks with the Scottish Senior Football Referees Association on tonight.