Geoff Brown has scotched claims that there is an agenda against Celtic from Scottish referees. The St Johnstone chairman, who takes his team to face the Glasgow club on Saturday March 20, says that clubs like his have never seen a questionable decision given in their favour at Celtic Park.
Celtic made an approach to the Scottish Football Association to voice their concerns over refereeing standards in the build-up to the recent Old Firm match and have continued a campaign against match officials, following the decision by referee Dougie McDonald not to overturn a red card given against Scott Brown at Ibrox.
That refusal to find in their favour then infuriated their manager Tony Mowbray, who branded the call a “political decision”. Brown though says that teams like St Johnstone have never seen a contentious call go their way at Celtic Park and rejected claims that referees were biased either way.
"As one of the clubs that has to go to Celtic Park, I don’t think we would ever believe we would be getting a decision in our favour," said Brown. "So as a provincial club, you live with that all the time.
"But I don’t believe referees are biased. Referees have got a job to do and, in general terms, they do a good job."
Brown, who has seen his team fight admirably in their quest to stay in the Scottish Premier League after winning last season’s First Division, went on to say that the time has come for everybody to move on from the previous week’s events and stop finding faults with referees.
"I don’t like it at all," Brown added. "I think that if someone has a job to do, let them do their job. Keeping on complaining after the event, I don’t see any point in that whatsoever."
Last Friday, Mowbray expressed his displeasure at the SFA’s decision not to wipe the sending off from Brown’s record and was unhappy that referee McDonald didn’t see fit to hold his hands up to a possible mistake in his original call.
"You’ve got to be able to own up to your mistakes, I think," Mowbray said. "In my opinion, there was a mistake made at the weekend [against Rangers] and the disappointment was that mistake wasn’t owned up to."
