Referee’s actions made us all angry

1:20pm Thursday 2nd October 2008

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Paul Heckingbottom column

‘Spike’ Lee is a danger to be around at the minute because he keeps banging heads.

Before the Shrewsbury game, we were talking to their centre half Graham Coughlan, who had gone off with concussion the week before. I think the two of them were comparing war wounds.

Then Spike cracked heads with TJ, who came off a lot worse because he was going backwards and didn’t see anyone coming towards him.

It looked bad when it happened but Shrewsbury scoring from it took the focus away and they both got up and carried on. But when TJ went down again, we knew something wasn’t right.

Seeing him have a panic attack was worrying and you don’t know what to do in that situation. But the last person I expected to see after walking back into the dressing room was TJ stood there looking right as rain.

He can’t remember anything about the game and that’s probably good. He’ll not realise how bad it was, so it’s not going to affect him and hopefully he will be fine again.

We were angry that the referee let them play on and score. He said that he saw the two lads moving on the floor but they were out cold. I think he was just covering his back.

Then later on, two Shrewsbury lads collided with each other and the ref stopped play straight away. One hurt his arm and the other a shoulder but it wasn’t even a head injury.

We weren’t happy with the ref at all. There was another incident in the second half when Nixy’s shirt was blatantly pulled back in the box.

I saw the referee put the whistle to his lips and my hands were up thinking that we’ve got a penalty but because Nixy managed to get an overhead kick in, he never gave anything.

When I questioned the ref, he said I was the only one who had appealed for it! So does it mean that whoever shouts loudest gets the decision?

Shrewsbury are a good team for this league, big and strong, and I’m sure they’ll be up there. But it was very frustrating in the circumstances and we’ve got to get it out of the system this weekend.