His article is mostly about McLeish/Scotland, but there are sections about Collum and Torbett:
SECTION ON COLLUM:
Collum too keen to flash yellow and red cards
ike a lot of Scottish football fans, I do wonder about the referee Willie Collum. What exactly is his modus operandi on the pitch? Does he go by hard evidence? Does he blow his whistle sometimes on a whim?
I was at St Mirren v Rangers last weekend and remain mystified by the red card shown by Collum to Daniel Candeias. If anything, St Mirren’s Anton Ferdinand was the aggressor, not Candeias. At that final whistle, when Ferdinand appeared to have Candeias trapped in an arm-lock, it seemed to me Collum ambled up, wasn’t too sure what he had seen and showed a yellow card to both players to play safe. Already on a yellow, it meant that Candeias was sent off.
Thursday’s botched hearing with the SFA was neither here nor there. The case had nothing to do with “mistaken identity” and so the Candeias ban stands.
There is a recurring theme here with Collum, which is the awarding of dubious yellow and red cards. Have to say, I am not impressed.
SECTION ON TORBETT
Celtic need to reach out and offer help to victims of Torbett
It has been an atrocious and embarrassing week for Celtic FC. The horrors of the Jim Torbett case, and the cruelties he inflicted on young footballers at the Celtic Boys Club three decades ago, are scarcely worth repeating here. Suffice to say, with Torbett sent down for a second time, may further justice be delivered.
Celtic, I believe, need to show more compassion for the victims. It doesn’t seem appropriate to argue, as the club repeatedly has, that the boys club was a separate legal entity to Celtic FC. Clearly, in so many other ways — cultural, social, financial and more — there was an association between the two. Celtic, at the very least, should be reaching out to the victims and offering as much assistance as possible, including financial compensation.
Quite apart from the cruelty inflicted by Torbett on these boys — and they now number at least five, with the likelihood being far more — there remains this harrowing question: how was it that the Celtic board of the 1980s allowed this man back inside Celtic Park to work again, when many were aware of his previous crimes against youngsters in the period between 1966 and 1974?
Torbett was a friend and business associate of at least two Celtic directors at the time — Jack McGinn and Kevin Kelly — which makes this case even more uncomfortable for Celtic. How on earth was this man accommodated?
Celtic FC today are paying a heavy price for that terrible negligence of 30-plus years ago. It should never have been allowed to happen, and yet, as in most of these sex crimes against young people in football, they occurred because the monsters at the heart of it all were somehow tolerated. A despicable negligence around Celtic back then allowed Torbett to pursue his agenda.
There was one other highly unfortunate consequence of the Celtic Boys Club case this week: the transparent and disgusting antics on Twitter and elsewhere of certain supporters of Rangers and other clubs who were self-evidently gleeful at the Torbett case. Little wonder many chose not to go near social media while this case was being played out: it became a stomach-churning charade of point-scoring. I never thought I would ever see a child-abuse case causing such excitement.
It can assuredly be said once more: Twitter absolutely betrays the darker side of human nature.
• Everyone now knows the famous story of the football match played between British and German soldiers during the First World War. It was a very moving episode in that tragedy.
This weekend, 100 years on, I will proudly wear my poppy, in memory and gratitude. At football matches this weekend across Britain, some will wear poppies, and some won’t.
That is fine by me. But can we not just respect each other’s opinion without the aggression and abuse? Oh, the irony.