Gordon Smith: Strachan once asked referee if he knew how to be a manager

THE Scottish Cup serves us up two cracking ties this afternoon, with Hearts hosting Hibs and Rangers taking on Morton at Ibrox.

Unfortunately much of the attention will be on the performances of two men who won’t kick a ball – match referees Willie Collum and Andrew Dallas.

Collum, who will officiate at the Edinburgh derby, represented Scotland at Euro 2016, but remains a controversial figure due to a series of high-profile mistakes in his past.

Dallas, meanwhile, travels to Govan off the back of an embarrassing error in a game involving Hearts last weekend.

In what was an extreme case of mistaken identity, he booked the Edinburgh side’s midfielder, Malaury Martin, after Motherwell striker Lois Moult had been accidentally tripped up by his own team-mate, Lionel Ainsworth.

So ashamed was Dallas, he took the step of phoning Hearts manager Ian Cathro to apologise, a move that will have been cleared at the highest level of the SFA refereeing department.

He was one of two referees to do that last weekend. Craig Thomson said sorry to St Johnstone boss, Tommy Wright, for the award of a penalty that never should have been in their loss to Celtic.

Tommy had come out with some heavy criticism of the official and thought his side should have also been awarded a stonewall spot-kick while 2-1 up in the game.

While Tommy had some cause, I would ask him to put himself in the other man’s shoes for a minute.

How would he feel if the referee had popped his head into the McDiarmid Park press room afterwards and said: “Yes I made a mistake with the penalty – but Celtic would have gone on to win anyway because Tommy got his tactics wrong. Saints were far too open.”

Not too pleased, I would imagine. But the hypothetical example shows up what can be an unequal relationship between managers and officials.

In my time as SFA chief executive, I witnessed one memorable exchange involving the current Scotland coach, Gordon Strachan.

It was at a mid-season get together between refs and club managers, with Gordon present because he was in charge of Celtic at the time.

One of the younger referees addressed the coaches and said: “I know you must be upset when we make bad decisions.”

Gordon replied, “Err, wait a minute. How can you? What do you know about football management?”

I waited for the obvious response: “Aye, and what do you know about refereeing?”

But it never came.

In fact, even though I was there as an observer, I was very tempted to make the point myself!

The fact is we need referees to run our games and they need to be shown respect. Yes, they will make mistakes but that is true of everybody in every walk of life.

I am sure some Rangers fans question why Dallas has been given such an important match in the wake of his high-profile mistake.

It happens far more often than not, is the answer.

I would ask them, how often do you see players retain their place in the side after making a blunder in their last outing?

The fact is Dallas has been allocated the tie because he is of the required grade and has drawn it on the rota.

It will have taken Dallas a lot of hard work to get to the level he’s at now.

So I hope he has a good game and that afterwards all the talk will be about the football which has been on show, rather than the standard of the officiating.

I would also add that every incident we see heightens the case for the use of video evidence to make sure we get the big decisions correct.

That has to be the way going forward.