Corry sorry

CORRY EVANS was forced into an embarrassing public apology after his wife launched a foul-mouthed, racist attack on a referee.

Lisa Evans abused Romanian official Ovidiu Hategan on Twitter after he awarded a penalty against her husband, which handed Switzerland a 1-0 win over Northern Ireland in their World Cup play-off.

Blackburn midfielder Evans (above) said: “On behalf of my wife, I would like to apologise unreservedly for the content and language

contained in the tweet that she issued last night.

“The comments were published in the heat of the moment and are not representative of her views.”

She said: “I would like to sincerely apologise to anyone I offended for the language contained in my tweet, I understand it was completely unacceptable, I should have never have let my emotions take over.

“I would never condone racism in any way.”

Hategan gave the secondhalf spot-kick having deemed Evans had handled Xherdan Shaqiri’s shot.

Evans was also booked for the incident, ruling him out of tomorrow’s return leg in Basel due to suspension.

Evans’ brother and team-mate Jonny described the controversial decision as an even bigger injustice than the infamous Thierry Henry incident which cost Republic of Ireland in the play-offs for the 2010 World Cup.

Henry’s blatant handball, which was not spotted by the officials in the Stade De France, helped set up a William Gallas winner that sent France to South Africa at Republic’s expense.

Evans (right) said: “It was actually a worse decision than the Henry incident because the ref has made a call that was not there.

“It’s different if he didn’t see it, like Paris in 2009.

“He’s claimed he saw something that didn’t happen, which is the hardest part to take.

“This is a decision which has really hurt because in a game of such magnitude for a referee to guess... it’s really, really difficult to take.

“You can’t really be 100 per cent sure if something has happened and I said that to him straight away.

“I said, ‘Ref, you have to be 100 per cent here’.

“But it was too late, he had already given the decision.

“As players we can sort of tell if it’s a penalty – there was maybe only a couple of yards between Corry and Shaqiri, who had the shot.

“If it hits someone’s hand, it takes a different kind of deflection. It hit his back and stopped the ball dead.

“We could tell and I’m sure everyone else could tell it was a bad call.”