“We decided to fight fire with fire against this opposition and it was a solid defensive performance.”League one Boss insist… (opinion)

I don’t usually criticise referees (much) but I can’t believe this one referees every match like that. Fussy didn’t seem to be the half of it, and although he often seemed to give free kicks for very little at other times he seemed to allow play to go on despite apparently obvious fouls. It seemed a clear trip for the penalty, though, and nobody seemed to argue.

Couldn’t make out from the other end what happened with O’Connor’s second yellow card. It seemed at first as if it was just a free kick to us, then it almost looked as if he’d given a penalty to Stevenage (although there was no crowd reaction) then it turned out it was a free kick after all. So with them already a man down due to having used all their substitutes it just made it ten a side for the last few minutes.

Sum up as a great team performance

More views from the Match Thread:

berksimps : “An awful game that took us back to non-league days. Neither side could put five passes together, don’t think either keeper made a real save. The ref blew for everything and stifled any hope of open play.

They missed a sitter in the first half. Darikwa stood no nonsense, defended well and got forward at times. Paudie won virtually all the duels in the air. Moylan worked hard and scored the all-important penalty. Otherwise, it was average at best. And at the end Paudie got sent off for a second yellow, we were too far away to know why. Still, three points is three points, is three points…”

sedgleyimp: “Back home. Terrible game of football but teams who are successful win ugly and that’s exactly what we did today. I’ll take that at a place where not every team will come away with 3 points.

A game that won’t last long in the memory, but you get 3 points from a scruffy 1-0 win and you get 3 points from a 5-star 6-0 win.

Being at that end of the ground, I can say that our penalty was one. McKeirnan was caught as he made a break into the box, probably the only time during the game when any of our players did this, so credit to him and Moylan for a good penalty.

I really can’t comment on their shout for a penalty just before ours or Paudie’s red card. Too far away from the away end, but I thought the ref had a strange day today with many odd decisions which left both sets of supporters questioning his parentage. What I will say though is that Paudie needs to stop getting involved unnecessarily as it’s not the first time this has happened. We have players now who will come into the starting XI for those suspended and there’s no guarantee of an immediate return to the first XI.

Anyway 3 points. Clean sheet bonus as well.

Hurrah”