[St Charles Owl]

Oh aye! The mandatory affidavit required by the English FA  should be easily introduced in Scotland in order to filter out any kinda discrepancies re any ref association or interest in certain Scottish footie clubs. It would also show some form of transparency and reasoning in assigning and not assigning certain Scot footie fixtures to any scrutinised ref - it makes sense and is practised elsewhere, no problem!

I'm not sure the comparison with England is a fair one. The FA in England have far more regions, far more refs and far more potential teams that refs could be affiliated to than Scotland does. Your population is based around 3-4 key regions that really only cover half a dozen teams that a ref is likely to support or be associated with. That will likely make it difficult to find enough good refs to cover a lot of the games if they are not allowed to ref certain teams. In England, there are more refs spread across the country that its much easier to find a ref from the North to cover a London derby or vice-versa, I think you would end up with too many refs from Glasgow or Edinburgh that have some affiliation with the 4 main teams there and therefore would not be able to ref games between those teams.

I don't know what similar sized countries with similar population concentrations do to choose their refs, but you have to imagine Norway, Sweden, Belgium etc must have either no real policy like Scotland or have a different solution that the Scottish FA could look at. Always comparing Scottish football to English football is probably not the best way to learn and come up with solutions in general.