A full seven days on, the name of Charlie Richmond remains mud in Scottish football. In pubs and clubs, in the radio and television studios, everybody has been busy doing Richmond in.

The referee has been libelled for being a dope, though in the critical deluge, where would you start with the litigation?

Richmond’s “crime” was to miss the glaring penalty that he should have awarded to Dundee United last Sunday when Celtic’s Gary Caldwell, with a clumsy, stabbing leg, upended Roy O’Donovan after the United player had deftly flicked the ball away. The tangerine end of Tannadice shrieked for a penalty and, up on the broadcasting gantry above the pressbox, we swiftly clustered around our monitors to check the rights and wrongs.

Well, having studied the images in slow motion two or three times, there was just no doubt about it. Mr Richmond was a dunce.

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I don’t deny it for moment: it’s too easy for the media in these moments to be a clanging judge and jury. With the naked eye, so many refereeing decisions are hard to call, yet in the leisurely way of the television or radio pundit, it’s never too late to stick the boot in. Indeed, in the case of Richmond at Tannadice last week, not one of us with total conviction could say he got it wrong without first checking the footage. Nonetheless, it had looked like a bad decision, and so it was proved.

It turned into a bad week for poor old Charlie. Vilified by Craig Levein, the United manager, on the spot, and then in the newspapers the following day, we soon had Donald McVicar, the Ayatolla of the SFA refereeing committee, beseeching refs to “cut out the silly mistakes” as they went about their business.

I’ve always liked that line about “cutting out mistakes”, whether it refers to referees, managers, maths teachers, janitors, or even sports-writers. When someone finally gets the scoop on how you “cut out mistakes”, would they be kind enough to write to us all?

None of this context, however, should completely spare Richmond from criticism. It was a dreadful gaffe he perpetrated at Tannadice, and it only further served to show how vulnerable referees are to being humiliated in public. We had further doses of it at both Pittodrie and Celtic Park on Saturday, when dubious refereeing decisions provoked consternation. The mystery, in football, is why the game should continue to subject referees to this.

What is it about the world’s most popular sport that it cannot embrace technology? What is it with Fifa, the world’s biggest-grossing sports organisation, that it cannot get going on things like video evidence and the 20-second pause? That’s all it would take to check with the video referee on such occasions. In the greater scheme of things, Tannadice last Sunday afternoon was a relative triviality, except that in that one moment on Scotland’s east coast it perfectly captured the stupidity of the situation.

I’m always fond of citing the moment in June 2002, in Japan, when Fifa kindly fixed up a video link – oh, the irony – between me and some others in Yokohama, and Mr Sepp Blatter, the Swiss lawyer who gravitated to become Fifa’s biggest wig, in Tokyo. People forget now how much the 2002 World Cup was beset by such incidents as Tannadice last week, and Fifa called this video conference back then to have it all aired.

I took the opportunity to ask Blatter if he didn’t think technology should be introduced in football and, in his polite but faintly rambling way, he agreed. But not a lot happened down that particular road. At the same World Cup, meanwhile, Hugh Dallas, arguably Scotland’s finest ever referee, told me that he believed technology would “surely come” at some stage before the next Word Cup.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but did we have video evidence at Germany in 2006? I was there, and I don’t recall daft decisions being overruled by officials in the stands.

People like to argue that “technology and football can’t work like this” because the game is so fast, and is in such a state of flux and excitement. Oh really? And a thrilling, absorbing rally at Wimbledon lacks in such excitement? They stop rallies there, don’t they, just as they do in all of tennis’s other major championships? The argument about football being somehow uniquely unsuited to video adjudication is as silly as it is faintly arrogant.

The day will come when some monstrous decision on the field, with millions of pounds in sponsorship money riding on it, will shake the game out of its Luddite bliss. It may take a World Cup final or a Champions League final – a game in which money and reputation are everything – when one side is grossly wronged by a referee to make it happen. But video refereeing is coming to football – it is only a question of when.

And another thing...

Boo to those who want an inquiry into anthem row

Dear me, what utter nonsense has been whipped up over what Bill McLaren, the faintly puritanical rugby commentator, might have called the “ill-mannered booing” of God Save The Queen by Scotland fans at Hampden Park last Wednesday night.

Gordon Smith, the SFA chief executive, is quite right to try to have national anthems – especially England’s – respected in Glasgow. But come on... booing and jeering are part of the landscape of football.

We’re not talking bigotry or racism here – these are far more weighty issues. Instead, we’re talking simply of ribald Scotland supporters, probably with beer in their bellies, giving it to their big, dominant neighbour. By one of those quirks, Scotland long ago opted out of GSTQ as its national anthem, whereas Northern Ireland, who were the visitors to Hampden, still use it. So it was simply too good an opportunity to miss.

Just like Portugal fans with Spain, or Holland’s with Germany, or Belgium’s with France, Scotland’s supporters feel a sense of rivalry with their big neighbour down south. There may be a slightly chip-on-the-shoulder “Little Scotsman” element about it, which has always made me cringe. But a Uefa inquiry? As in racism? Give me peace...

On the debit side

Celtic have long preened themselves over their shrewd housekeeping, and so they should. The club has been a model of financial management, with their latest yearly figures published last week confirming it once again.

Nonetheless, the Thomas Gravesen signing has been a fiasco. Bought from Real Madrid for £2 million in August 2006, on a salary estimated to be £27,000 a week, the eccentric Dane has cost Celtic somewhere in the region of £3 million for his great misadventure. It has been a painful waste of money which must embarrass both Peter Lawwell, the Celtic chief executive, and Gordon Strachan, the manager.

Bobo Balde, another player on a ludicrous contract together with Gravesen, are unsightly blotches on Celtic canvas. While the club has impressed with its annual figures, it has also been stung horrendously by these two situations.

Scot-free Team GB?

So the Rt Hon Gordon Brown, PM, believes that a GB football team should compete in the 2012 Olympics, eh? This is worrying for Scotland and for Scottish football.

Never mind the politics of it, which so preoccupies the SFA, in terms of their Fifa standing. More worryingly, just think how few – if any – Scots would actually make such a team?

Right now I would hazard, at a stretch, that a fit Barry Ferguson might make a GB squad of 22, but no one else. The only way Scotland could be represented would be to do what the farmers did with the EU all those years ago, and insist on “quotas”.

Other than that, Team GB will be Team England.