Thing that puzzled me was the fact he didn't give it straight away. He waited 2-3 seconds, looked towards a non-existent linesman on West stand side and then towards East stand side - did the East Stand linesman flag? I don't think the ref's view was any better than mine at halfway line of Wedt stand. Maybe he was just checking with Ian Evatt this was the moment the unexpected brown envelope in his changing room was intended for ?
The last half hour the ref was looking for something to give them and the liner on west stand might have well stopped at home, he was absolute s---e. He hadn't got a scooby doo on what game we were playing
There was also one on cole , their bloke nearly shoved him into ponty end, both hands in middle of back. Then their fella runs 20 odd yards taking a throw, the ref pulls him up tells him to go back, but player never moved and took it from same place. How the hell they qualify to be refs and linesmen i do not know. The annoying thing there are supposed to be assessors at each match, but they all piss in the same pot, they are all bent
Where have you all seen it? The only clip I’ve seen doesn’t give a good view of it. One thing I do know is it seemed to take an absolute age for him to award it.
The one i couldn't believe was the appalling assault on Williams when he kicked one off the line in the first half. He didnt even give a free kick!!
Looked like six and two threes to me and the highlights confirm imho. What is really egregious though is that the highlights show that the ref had hardly any view of the incident - he was blocked off from it by Cosgrove and one of their players. Confirms my thought at the time that he was just guessing and applying the unconscious bias that his allowing the Bolton players to ref the last 20 minutes had planted into his head.
The defenders stopped trying to play out and went back to long ball, press on defenders doesn't really work then.
My (neutral) friend said the same. They all seemed to be on the wrong side, for some reason. We wondered whether it was a training ground thing that went wrong?
