Rangers have taken legal actions on the var and referee on Rangers vs dundee united

The appointment of officials in Scottish football rarely makes headlines until something goes wrong, and when it does, the questions tend to arrive all at once. That was the position on Sunday, when former top-flight referee Bobby Madden raised doubts about the way Matthew MacDermid had been scheduled across a single weekend. On the Friday night, MacDermid was the referee in charge when Partick Thistle beat Ayr United 1-0, awarding the penalty that decided the match. Less than twenty-four hours later, he was in the VAR room at Dens Park for Dundee’s 2-2 draw with Rangers. The decision at Firhill had attracted heavy criticism, and some people were asking whether a man at the centre of that storm should have been handed another high-profile assignment so quickly.

The incident that started the discussion was an unusual one. Seb Drozd went down in the box with Ayr defender Liam Dick nearby, and MacDermid pointed to the spot. Oisin Smyth converted the penalty, and it proved to be the only goal of the game. Madden, speaking on the So Near, Yet So VAR podcast, described the footage in blunt terms. He said the decision had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Instagram, which told you everything you needed to know about how it had been received. He pointed out that the referee was well placed, that the attacker’s reaction was delayed and that there appeared to be a smirk as he went down. His summary was that it simply looked terrible, which is a harsh verdict from someone who spent years in the same job.

The context makes those words more significant. A penalty in a match that finishes 1-0 is, by definition, the decisive moment, and a poor decision in that situation can alter a season for the club on the receiving end. For Ayr United, the result meant a defeat they believed they did not deserve, and for Partick Thistle it meant three points that were gratefully received. In the Scottish Championship, where margins at the top and the bottom of the table are fine, that kind of call can be the difference between a promotion push and a mid-table finish. The criticism that followed was therefore not simply about a single refereeing judgement. It was about the consequences of that judgement, and about whether the system that selects and supports officials is doing enough to protect them from situations in which errors become more likely.

That is where Madden’s most interesting contribution came. Rather than pile onto MacDermid, he suggested that the more important question was about the people who make the appointments. He noted that the official had reportedly been involved in a game in Europe earlier in the week, had travelled back the day before the Partick Thistle match, had refereed that game, and was then scheduled to act as video assistant referee for Rangers at Dens Park. Put like that, it is a punishing schedule, and it raises a fair question about whether any official can be expected to perform at his best when he is asked to cover three significant matches in a short space of time. Madden’s point was that an individual error, however poor, may be partly a reflection of the system that placed the individual in that position.

Former Hearts player Ryan Stevenson took a different line. He called for MacDermid to be removed from the Rangers appointment following the controversial call, arguing that the Friday night decision should have consequences. That is an understandable instinct, and it reflects the way many supporters feel when an official makes a mistake that has a big impact. In most walks of life, a person who has just made a high-profile error might be moved off the next big task until he has had a chance to reset. The idea that a referee should be given a break after a bad call, or at least be kept away from major fixtures until confidence is restored, is not unreasonable, and it has been applied in other leagues from time to time.

Against that, there is a strong argument for treating individual decisions with a sense of perspective. Referees make hundreds of decisions a season, and every one of them will make mistakes. If an official were removed from a high-profile appointment every time he made a poor call, the pool of available officials would shrink rapidly, particularly in a country the size of Scotland, where the number of referees and video assistants capable of working at the top level is limited. There is also a risk that constantly dropping referees after errors would encourage them to avoid taking decisions, and nobody wants a game officiated by people who are afraid to make a call. The best approach is usually a mixture of support, scrutiny and honest assessment, not a knee-jerk reaction to a single incident.

The key distinction is between a referee’s role on the pitch and his role in the VAR room. A referee who makes a mistake on the field has misjudged a moment in real time, with limited angles and a fraction of a second to decide. A video assistant works in a different environment. He has access to multiple replays, the time to review them carefully and the responsibility to intervene only when there has been a clear and obvious error. The skills are related but not identical, and an error in one role does not automatically indicate a weakness in the other. Many of the best VARs are officials who are calm, analytical and willing to defer to the on-field referee unless the evidence is overwhelming, which is a very different temperament from the one that makes a good referee in the centre circle.

What matters, therefore, is how MacDermid actually performed at Dens Park. The available evidence suggests that his involvement in the Dundee and Rangers match was largely uncontroversial. When Dundee’s players raged after Rangers’ equaliser, claiming that Joe Bevan had been tripped in the build-up, MacDermid reviewed the incident and decided not to send referee Duncan Nicolson to the pitchside monitor. Former players including Kris Boyd, James McFadden and Richard Foster backed that decision, with Boyd accepting that a foul given in real time would have stood but that the incident was not clear enough to overturn. A VAR who declines to intervene in a marginal case is doing exactly what the protocol asks, and on that evidence there is no sign that his Friday night had affected his judgement.

The same is true of the other significant reviews of the evening. Early in the first half, Minsu Kim’s goal-bound effort struck the hand of Dundee defender Ryan Astley, and Rangers’ appeals for a penalty were rejected by Nicolson and upheld by VAR, with the ball reportedly having deflected off Astley’s knee first. Late in the match, a VAR review concluded that a challenge by Dujon Sterling on Alan Forrest deserved only a yellow card, which kept Rangers at eleven men. Both of those decisions can be debated, and supporters of either side will have their own views. But they were consistent with a VAR who was applying the high threshold for intervention that the system demands, and none of them looked like the product of a tired or distracted mind.

It is also worth noting that the decisions at Dens Park did not all go one way. The penalty appeal for Rangers was turned down, which was a decision that went against the visitors. The Bevan incident was decided in their favour, and the Sterling review arguably went their way too. When an official’s decisions split in that way, it becomes harder to argue that he was influenced by anything other than his reading of the incidents. It also makes the case for removing him from the appointment less compelling, because the evidence of the match itself does not point to any bias or lack of focus. Fair-minded supporters of both clubs would struggle to claim that the VAR performance was the reason for the draw.

Rangers, as a club, have a history of raising concerns about VAR appointments, which gives this episode a particular resonance for their supporters. In December 2024, the club contacted the Scottish FA to express serious concerns after two officials who had been involved in a controversial decision in the League Cup final were quickly reinstated, and one of them was appointed to a Premiership match involving the club that had benefited from the error. That episode, which the club made public, was about the principle of accountability and about the perception of fairness in the way officials are chosen. It is natural that some supporters would see the MacDermid appointment through the same lens, even though the circumstances are different and the Friday night incident did not involve Rangers at all.

The difference is important, though. The 2024 complaint was about an incident in which the officials had made a significant error in a match involving Rangers, and the club felt that the consequences had been too light. The present case concerns an error in a lower-league match with no connection to Rangers, followed by a VAR appointment in which the performance appears to have been competent. The appropriate response, if there is one, is not to question the individual but to ask whether the system for scheduling and supporting officials is robust enough. Madden’s remarks fit that approach, because they focus on the demands placed on the official rather than on his character. If the governing body is asking referees to cover too many matches in too short a time, errors will become more likely, and no amount of criticism of individuals will fix that.

There is a further point about transparency. When a decision as controversial as the penalty at Firhill is made, supporters want to know what happens next. They want to see that the governing body has reviewed the incident, that the official has been given feedback and that appropriate action has been taken. The Scottish FA has a head of refereeing and a Key Match Incident panel that examines major decisions, and those mechanisms exist precisely to provide that accountability. The difficulty is that the process is often opaque, and that decisions about appointments are made without public explanation. If the governing body had said, for example, that MacDermid’s Friday night decision had been reviewed and that his VAR appointment was considered appropriate for specific reasons, much of the criticism might have been avoided.

The wider issue is the pressure on officials in Scottish football. Referees and video assistants work in an environment in which every decision is scrutinised by supporters, pundits and social media, and in which a single mistake can be viewed hundreds of thousands of times within hours. That scrutiny is a necessary part of the game, but it also takes a toll. Officials who are tired, who have travelled long distances or who are worried about the reaction to their last mistake are more likely to make errors in their next match. A system that recognises those pressures and plans around them is likely to produce better results than one that simply assigns the most experienced officials to the biggest games regardless of their schedule.

None of this should be read as an excuse for poor decision-making. A penalty awarded for a tumble that looks, in the words of a former referee, terrible is a mistake that deserves to be acknowledged, and the official involved has to accept responsibility. The fact that he was working in difficult circumstances may explain the error, but it does not remove the need for honest self-assessment and improvement. What it does mean is that the response should be proportionate and focused on solutions. If the governing body concludes that officials are being asked to do too much, it should adjust the schedule. If it concludes that an official needs additional support or training, it should provide it. What it should not do is treat every mistake as a reason to remove someone from the next big match.

For Rangers and their supporters, the immediate relevance of all this is limited. The draw at Dens Park was decided by two defensive errors and a failure to take chances, not by the performance of the VAR. Derek McInnes did not blame the officials after the match, and the evidence suggests that the key decisions were handled sensibly. The club may still feel it is entitled to ask questions about how appointments are made, given its history on the subject, but the case in this instance is not strong. If anything, the episode shows how easily a story about a refereeing error in one match can be linked to a completely different fixture, simply because the same official was involved in both.

The longer-term lesson is about how the system learns. Every season brings controversial decisions, and every season brings calls for reform. The most effective improvements tend to come from patient, practical changes, such as better preparation for officials, clearer communication with clubs and more thoughtful scheduling. The debate sparked by Madden’s comments is a useful reminder of that, because it shifts the focus from blaming individuals to asking whether the structures around them are fit for purpose. That is a more productive question than whether one official deserved to keep his appointment, and it is one that the Scottish FA would be wise to address.

In the end, the story is a modest one. A referee made a decision on Friday night that was widely criticised. He then worked on Saturday evening as a VAR, and by most accounts he did the job competently. A former referee raised a reasonable question about the scheduling, and a former player suggested that the appointment should have been changed. Both views are understandable, and both deserve a considered response from the people who run the game. But the most striking thing about the episode is how little it affected the outcome at Dens Park, where two sides produced a thrilling draw and the officials, for the most part, stayed out of the story. That may be the best compliment that can be paid to a VAR, and it suggests that the controversy is more about perception and process than about anything that actually happened on the p