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HUGH DALLAS was probably the least surprised man in Scotland to learn Willie Collum had been subjected to death threats in the wake of Rangers 3-1 victory over Celtic at Parkhead.
After all, Dallas, at Parkhead in his refereeing heyday, was felled by a coin which left him with blood pouring from a wound and needing stitches, when he took control of the Celtic shame game in May 1999 which Rangers won to take the title.
And afterwards, after he had reached what he believed to be the sanctuary of his own home, and was in the bosom of his wife and family, a brick was sent crashing through one of his house windows.
More recently, Steven Craven, the assistant who was involved in referee Dougie McDonald's about turn on that penalty award to Celtic against Dundee United, has quit the game following reports that he too had been threatened, and his two sons verbally abused.
It is amazing that on the day UEFA President Michel Platini, who had been Celtic's guest at the Old Firm game, was speaking out about the need for clubs and supporters alike to respect referees, Collum should have had to call in the police.
There was also, according to the Keith Jackson's latest outstanding exclusive in the Daily Record, a sectatrian nature to the threats, though how that worked is a bit of a mystery.
Collum is clearly a man of deep convictions and teaches Reilgious Education at the Cardinal Newman School in Bellshill.
That he should be subjected to this - and I think we can safely assume it wasn't Rangers fans upset at his decision not to send off Anthony Stokes - is, as the Scottish Football Association rightly says, "behaviour which is abhorent and has no place in football."
But going even further back than Dallas being assaulted on the field and then attacked inside his own house, there is a pattern which has developed over the years.
I recall that when linesman George McBride flagged Jorge Cadette controversially offside in an Old Firm game at Ibrox, what followed appeared an organised campaign to blacken his name and call his integrity into question.
And during the same era there was the strange case of Jim McCluskey and the private investigators.
I was at Old Trafford on the day the story broke, and in those pre-internet days, knew nothing about it until my old chum, the late Jim Blair of the Daily Record, arrived with a copy of that day's paper which carried the tale.
It was to the effect that one of the leading lights and best known names within the Celtic Supporters Association had hired a private eye to follow McCluskey and try to dig some dirt on him ahead of an Old Firm League Cup Final.
In the media room my many English colleagues soon gathered round to read this extraordinary story and their reaction was to hoot with laughter and derision at both the petty nature of such a support, and its sinister aspect.
I've got a pal who was based in Manchester with a national daily back then, and who still operates as a reporter in the city, who often recalls it and chortles. The image of Celtic, which the club always appear so keen to project in a good way south of the border, took a battering in England over the McCluskey episode.
But coming up to date, and examining what has happened to Collum, it is worth recalling the words which were so carefully delivered by Walter Smith after his team's triumph.
According to Smith, it was wrong to put so much pressure on the official in the build up, with the Rangers manager adding tellingly, that this was the second time in the days prior to the last three Old Firm encounters this had happened.
Dougie McDonald suffered before the game in February, which Rangers won, and what appeared on the official Celtic webite was branded as "cowardly" by SFA president George Peat.
As I have already revealed, when the same Celtic website, questioned a decision in that match by McDonald, saying no "fair minded man could agree it was right," the clear implication was that the referee was not fair. Not impartial. Not unbiased.
Therefore, he was, unfair, partial and biased.
Yet, when this was referred to Hibernian chairman Rod Petrie's General Purposes Committee, it decided a censure was appropriate, and under Petrie's orders, the decision was kept secret until I revealed it just prior to Sunday's match.
Scottish football supporters in general should be indebted to the Daily Record's Keith Jackson, whose fine reporting skills uncovered the death threats to 31-year-old family man Collum, and his kids.
And a debt from all fans is also owed to Mark Guidi who, first in the Record and then 24 hours later in the Sunday Mail, produced exclusives about the threats to Craven and his sons, and how he was poised to quit.
New SFA chief executive Stewart Regan has indeed walked into the eye of the storm at a crucial time for the future of football in Scotland.
If referees and their assistants are not allowed to go about their buisness of being without fear or favour during the match, because they are in terror for their own safetly and that of their children afterwards, then the jig is up
Indeed, not only is there something rotten at the core of Scottish football, but Scottish society in general.
Perhaps it is not so much a a footballing mess for Regan to try and sort out, as a bigger one, relating to a broken society in Scotland which needs some sort of intervention from Alex Salmond.
Unless the first minister elects to sing dumb, for fear of losing votes in the Scottish election coming up in May.
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