Meeting of the Parliament 14 January 2026
There was—I knew that I was going down that road, and that I probably should not.
In the short time that is left to me in the debate, however, I want to say how important VAR is. I made an error in that match: I wrongly flagged a Dundee player offside when the footage showed that he was onside. My error was corrected on the pitch and a decision was taken so that my mistake did not have an impact on the game.
That is why I support the use of VAR—I think that the match officials should not be the only ones in a stadium who can see that a mistake has been made. I have gone to games where people have seen on their phones, straight away, that a goal was offside and should not have been given, and now we are able to correct that. There are still problems with VAR, and I hope that it can be improved. There is continuous work within the Scottish FA to try to iron out some of the problems with VAR, but—more often than not—it will correct mistakes that we, as humans, make, and I think that that is a good thing.
I know that my time is up, Deputy Presiding Officer but I want to say something briefly. We are seeing some great achievements in refereeing in Scotland—for example, Nick Walsh was recently promoted to the elite level in European refereeing. Our match officials in Scotland on the international list are performing, as they have been for many years, at the highest level in European competitions.
Recently, Molly Alexander, who was formerly an international female official based up in the Highlands, joined the SFA’s referee committee in Scotland, which is another positive move. Under Willie Collum, the head of refereeing at the SFA, and Tommy Murphy, the deputy head of refereeing, we have Martin Atkinson, who came from the English Football Association and is helping us with VAR. We have some of the top officials from previous years now involved in the recruitment and retention of today’s officials, and I hope that that will continue in the future. In a debate about football, I think that it is important that our match officials are also mentioned and recognised.
I say again that refereeing is a great opportunity: anyone who wants to be involved in the game but who, like me, lacks any ability to play football can referee—as you have shown yourself, Deputy Presiding Officer.