Hibs boss Nick Montgomery calls for Premiership referees to be full-time

Hibernian manager Nick Montgomery has called for Premiership referees to be full-time in the role as he believes it will help them “master” the craft.

Currently refereeing in Scotland is a part-time role meaning officials work other jobs alongside the responsibility of taking charge of games in the top-flight.

Montgomery believes that takes away the ability to fully analyse games and their performances and insists that is “unfair” in such a high-pressure role.

It seems almost every weekend that refs are coming under the spotlight with some decisions debated for weeks on end if they affect the outcome of some of the bigger games.

And despite VAR being brought in with the hope taking some pressure away from the men in the middle it has only heightened the pressure and brought more talking points in recent months.

But while the Hibs boss says there is good in VAR, such as taking away doubt from debatable goals, he thinks it would help referees if they could take more time to focus on improving their own performances by reviewing games.

Speaking after their Scottish Cup defeat to Rangers on Sunday he said: “It (VAR) definitely does help the game, there are positives and negatives to it, it’s easier to talk about the negatives but I think the positives are when a goal is scored just to double check that the goal should stand.

“But we have to be honest, there are part-time referees and I think it is a full-time job. It’s probably not fair on referees at times when they have part-time jobs and they have to go to other jobs because how you can fully focus on being the best you can be as a referee, in a league as big as the Premiership with teams that have huge budgets and play Champions League football.

“Again that’s probably been something that is talked about year in year out but it definitely would help the referees and the officials spend more time on reviewing the games and decisions and taking, like we do in football with the matches, we spend a lot of time looking at that through the week and it’s really time consuming but it’s also a good opportunity to master what you’re doing.

“But that’s not for me to decide.”