Ref admitted he got pen wrong

SKELMERSDALE United’s luck is yet to improve as a controversial penalty proved the decider in their 1-0 defeat to Whitby Town.

Tommy Lawson’s side have lost three leagues games in a row but were undone by a poor refereeing decision on Tuesday evening.

“It was a very close game. I thought we played particularly well and were robbed of a result,” said manager, Lawson.

“I was really disappointed and it doesn’t help that the referee apologised he was wrong. I admire the fact he was honest at the end but it’s not good when they admit the penalty wasn’t a penalty and it has cost you a result.

“I can’t get my head around it. He said he got it wrong. I thought it was a big improvement in terms of performance though. We looked balanced. We had a good shape and we worked hard.

“When you are struggling things often don’t go your way. We’ve got to keep working hard. I told the players we’ve got to produce that performance again.

“They set the bar and if they can achieve that same level of performance we’ll be fine. It does require that effort and intensity though. The aim is to emulate that again and again, we can’t just switch it off like a button,” he added.

Skelmersdale take on Hednersford United on Saturday and Lawson is hoping his players can reproduce their pleasing performance.

The team will be boosted by the return of several key players and after introducing some new faces this week, Skem are feeling positive.

Jonah O’Reilly, Max Hazeldine, Steve Attarick were all new additions to Skelmersdale this week and Lawson is encouraged by the bright starts they made.

“On Saturday we should have a few key players back. We’re starting to look more and more like a full squad and we should be more capable. At the moment, we just have to make do”.