St Mirren manager makes call for Scotland's referees to go full-time

St Mirren manager Stephen Robinson has called for Scotland’s referees to go full-time in an attempt to lift standards.

The Paisley club contacted the Scottish FA refereeing department earlier this week to request clarity over a number of decisions they felt had gone against the team, including a controversial call not to award St Mirren a penalty.

That was followed by a statement from Dundee United that expressed the Tannadice club’s unhappiness over the current use of VAR and level of decision-making.

Robinson was quick to acknowledge that refereeing is not an easy job and that his concern is in supporting officials. He believes the best way to do that is to invest money in making referees full-time employees so they can spend more time on improving their skills.

“Everybody wants to vilify someone in this world now, everyone wants to blame somebody.” the St Mirren boss said.

“You lose games due to players and managers’ mistakes as well as referees but how can you help them?

“VAR was put in place to help when they made mistakes, to rectify them. It’s currently not doing that to the level we all hoped.

“How can we make it better? Doing it full time would be my suggestion.

“If you do something on a daily basis, every day, you have to be better than doing it part-time. You have to be.

“The law of averages suggest you will get it right more often. Like a full-time footballer will make better decisions than a part-time one because he does it every day.

“Maybe that’s one step.”