Crawford Allen welcomes introduction of VAR into Scottish football

Referees’ chief Crawford Allan has welcomed the introduction of VAR to Scottish football, with Hibernian’s clash with St Johnstone the first match to use the system later this month.

After nearly three years of planning, development and testing, FIFA has given the green light to introduce Video Assistant Referees to the game in Scotland, with all eyes turning to Easter Road on October 21st.

VAR will be coordinated centrally from the video operations room at Clydesdale House in Springhill in the east end of Glasgow.

NEWS | VAR will be used in Scottish domestic football from next week, beginning with Hibernian v St Johnstone in the cinch Premiership.

— Scottish FA (@ScottishFA) October 12, 2022

It will assist on-field referees in the event of a clear and obvious error or a serious missed incident in relation to straight red cards, penalty area incidents, goals and mistaken identity.

Allan, the Scottish FA’s head of referee operations, said: “We are delighted to have received approval to introduce VAR in Scottish football.

“We have worked extensively over a near three-year period to get to this point, have tested in every cinch Premiership stadium as part of the training process, and we are ready to go.

“As we have seen across the world, VAR has helped ensure a higher percentage of on-field refereeing decisions are accurate and that is a principle our match officials support.

“I am grateful to the match officials who have given up their time to take part in the training programme and I would like to thank our VAR working group and our key partners at the SPFL, and in particular its COO (chief operating officer) Calum Beattie, for his help throughout the development phase, as well as the cinch Premiership clubs who have all