Referee’s decision to caution Curran leaves sour taste for Reds boss Gray
Cliftonville 5 Dungannon Swifts 1
AS delighted as he was with Cliftonville’s commanding performance, Barry Gray was left frustrated by a late refereeing decision in his side’s defeat of Dungannon Swifts.
Visiting skipper Chris Hegarty’s challenge on Levi Ives earned the hosts a free-kick and sparked a minor row which ended with whistler Jamie Robinson flashing yellow cards in the direction of both Hegarty and Chris Curran.
“When there’s a bit of a coming together, referees seem to have it in their heads that a booking for one player on each team takes care of it,” explained Gray.
“It’s box-ticking. It’s because there’s an assessor sitting in the stands making sure he does something. It’s hard to blame the referee because if he doesn’t show a couple of yellows, he probably gets an X in the box from the assessor.”
Dungannon took a fifth-minute lead through Jamie Harney’s own goal before Cliftonville hit back with doubles from Rory Donnelly and Jay Gormley as well as an eye-catching strike from Curran — whose late caution will rule him out of next weekend’s clash with Glenavon.
“I don’t think any yellow cards were needed at all,” added Gray.
“There was a tackle, we were awarded a free-kick and that’s it, so let’s get on with it. Nobody needs booked, but the referee probably feels like he has to be seen to do something — but do they think about the knock-on effects?
“Chris Curran has no idea why he was booked. I was pretty close to it all and Chris just happened to be standing there, maybe in the wrong place at the wrong time — but he gets a yellow and that’s him out of a big match for no real reason that we can see.”
Swifts boss Kris Lindsay reflected: “It’s a setback and now we will look to give a response.
“We’ll look to learn from this but we can’t let it drag us down because we’ve been going in the right direction recently.”
CLIFTONVILLE: Neeson, McGovern, Ives, Harney, C Curran, Garrett (Maguire, 77 mins), R Donnelly (R Curran, 81 mins), Catney (Harkin, 74 mins), McConnell, Gormley, A Donnelly. Unused subs: Breen, McDonald, Bagnall, Lavery.
DUNGANNON: Moore, Hegarty (Dykes, 86 mins), Wilson, Armstrong, McElroy, Harpur (Burke, 46 mins), O’Rourke, Patton, Lowe, Hutchinson (O’Carroll, 62 mins), Lafferty.
Unused subs: McGinty, Coyle, Campbell,
Smyth. Referee: Jamie Robinson (Portadown)
Man of the match: Rory Donnelly Match rating: 7/10