Neil Cameron: Video refs in Scotland would ruin our game

The right-wing British establishment is never going to welcome a woman of colour into the Royal Family, Brexit will be an utter mess and VAR will prove to be the ruin of football.

These fearless predictions were made by me some time ago and anyone else with an IQ into double digits. If you didn’t see any of these four outcomes on the horizon then please seek help. This is the most obvious of the bleeding obvious. And while I’m on a run, let me play Nostradamus one more time.

Should video assistant referees be introduced to Scottish football, it would be an unmitigated disaster which far from bringing more fairness and clarity, would instead introduce more paranoia, conspiracies, hatred and immaturity to our national obsession.

READ MORE: "Steven Gerrard will top Graeme Souness's achievements at Rangers if he wins the Scottish title"

Just what we need, eh?

I’m a bore on the subject, I know. Match Of The Day has become just like Question Time in that I shout at the television and the latest VAR controversy with the same venom as I do whenever Melanie Phillips is on the QT panel.

Yes, VAR is as bad as the woman who says that “there is no evidence for global warming” while Australia burns. To be fair to “Mad Mel” – a nickname even colleagues know her by – she has never disallowed a goal because a striker’s big toe was judged to be offside after the 10th viewing.

Could you imagine VAR up here? Goals being ruled out in terms of millimetres. An accidental and unavoidable handball getting a goal ruled out despite it happening several passes before the ball hit the net. A yellow card being changed to a red because the guys watching upstairs decide the foul was worse than the referee deemed.

It happened to Arsenal captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang at the weekend. He was booked for what was a shocking, if unintentional, clatter of Crystal Palace’s Max Meyer. He was booked by the ref before VAR made the call to upgrade to red.

I actually thought the decision was correct. Aubameyang was late on Meyer, who did well to hobble away without a broken ankle. But on the telly that night, both Alan Shearer and Danny Murphy believed the foul only deserved a booking.

Now, who knows more about football; the VAR guy or England’s greatest-ever centre-forward?

VAR doesn’t get everything right. Not even close. Plus, the rules are, in places, plain daft and when you mix the two, it becomes a right old stooshie. The paying supporters in the ground sit around in the cold while some bloke decides whether the ball hit a player’s armpit two phases before a goal was scored.

READ MORE: Celtic unveil Alonso as manager of women’s side

In England, VAR is taking the joy out of football. In Scotland it would lead to our own Bay Of Pigs. Celtic and Rangers already act like spoiled children at every bad decision they believe goes against them, spitting out statements which make Trump’s toilet texts read like Dorothy Parker.

And these are quickly followed up on social media by the few who live in a world full of conspiratorial nonsense, which I suppose gives them a sense of purpose.

VAR is rubbish, doesn’t work properly and is getting increasingly unpopular with fans and players but is probably here to stay. This means it’s coming to Scotland.

The first Old Firm game will take three hours to finish and if anyone believes that VAR would take away the controversies, that the technology is certain to stop any wrong decisions being made, they are far from the full shilling.

All it will do is add more controversy which would do nothing for the hatred that surrounds Scottish football.

There are many people in and around Glasgow’s two football clubs who do believe the SFA, media, referees et al are out to get them. And even if they don’t actually, those inside Celtic Park and Ibrox are happy to sign off poorly thought-out statements about supposed crimes against sportsmanship.

VAR does nothing for the spirit of football. We don’t need and we don’t want it – or shouldn’t want it. Every single week in the Premier League, the VAR system shows itself to be an expensive mistake.

READ MORE: Transfer fee spat is not my fault, says Cadden

If you are the sort of person who gets themselves in a tizzy because television replays show that an opposition player was a fingernail offside before he passes to someone else who then crossed for a team-mate to score, then maybe football isn’t for you.

The best players make mistakes, miss penalties and let the ball through their legs. Referee get things wrong. It’s been like this forever and, do you know something? Football has always been brilliant.

As soon as a goal is scored in the top leagues around Europe, the fifth and sixth officials rewind the action to spot an infringement. That’s not football.

VAR is good for absolutely nothing, as Edwin Starr almost wrote.