Premier Sports Scottish Football Social Club<\/a>: \u201cI\u2019m not going to sit here and play some sort of victim because I\u2019m big and ugly enough to take it on my shoulders. But there\u2019s a strain that comes with it, and for everyone else around me as well.<\/p>\n\u201cI take a lot of pride in trying to be straight and honest with my assessment of things. Clearly, that upsets people in power sometimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, I\u2019m not here to appease them. I\u2019m trying to be honest, and I think that\u2019s important. There\u2019s a serious issue here and a dangerous precedent set by the SFA. They see fit to ban me for things that I\u2019ve said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a false narrative that\u2019s been peddled claiming there has been over a year of complaints and conversations between the refs and the SFA, who are unhappy by how I\u2019ve approached things.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy retort to that would be: why on earth did the SFA not decide to discuss this with their broadcasting partners at Premier Sports?<\/p>\n
\u201cThis spreads from an incident at St Mirren against Hibs, where I saw a mistake \u2014 an unbelievable mistake \u2014 from a certain official.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince then, there has been a concerted effort from the SFA to try and undermine me. What that showed was there is a system in place, VAR, that isn\u2019t fit for purpose.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe SFA came after the BBC and came after Premier and asked for an apology of sorts. Let me be clear: that apology was about the use of \u2018cover-up\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was not trying to suggest there is a grand conspiracy here, but a mistake by the officials, and that mistake wasn\u2019t articulated to us. The communication to Premier wasn\u2019t as clear as it could have been, and Premier asked for better communication going forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could have used a better word, but they were trying to minimise and mitigate the mistake that was made. I should have articulated that better. There are good referees in this country, but I think there are some who aren\u2019t, and there is weak leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stewart also reckons the communication over his ban from Hampden chiefs has been ‘farcical’. He went on: \u201cThey didn\u2019t take kindly to the fact I am still being given an opportunity on the broadcasting team on the footprint of Hampden, in the car park.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey sent an email to Premier Sports saying they hadn\u2019t followed what had been asked of them \u2014 whatever that means \u2014 and that I was banned from the car park.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuite simply, it was farcical. The fallout has been petty and pathetic. What sort of country do we live in that an institution sees fit to ban somebody for having an opinion they don\u2019t agree on? Fundamentally, that\u2019s what this is about.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything I have done is out there in the public domain. Premier and myself have asked for better communication for six months.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it really a tenable position to say \u2018we\u2019re not happy\u2019 and not communicate, then you\u2019re banned?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not how grown-ups behave. The status quo isn\u2019t tenable, so how do you resolve that? You speak, you communicate.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is what Premier have been doing since October. Everyone else is looking for firm dialogue; why are the SFA not?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stewart has refused to back down and named the exact incident he believes the SFA have taken issue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":908354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7826],"tags":[192,748,2628,918,4884,47959,88104,712,33534,1638,21841,16,15],"class_list":["post-908353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-glasgow","tag-bbc","tag-britain","tag-celtic-fc","tag-glasgow","tag-great-britain","tag-hearts-fc","tag-michael-stewart","tag-scotland","tag-scottish-football-association","tag-scottish-premiership","tag-st-mirren-fc","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116441239352660122","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/908354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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