Referee’s chief has a hotline to the Posh boss

For the second successive Sunday, Posh manager Steve Evans received an apologetic phone call from chief of Football League referees David Allison.

Allison was on the phone to accept match referee Craig Hicks had blundered by sending Posh right-back Liam Shephard off in the crucial League One game at Plymouth on April 7.

And he was back in contact last Sunday to admit that the decision to disallow a headed ‘goal’ from Gwion Edwards in the home defeat to Rochdale was also wrong.

Hicks was stood down for a week after his Plymouth performance. Shephard’s red card was overturned despite a surprising intervention from Argyle who sent in extra video evidence to try and ensure Shephard’s dismissal stood!

Evans said: “David Allison’s first words to me last weekend were ‘this is a hard call for me to make after last week’, but fair play to him for making the call. Gwion wasn’t even close to being offside so it was a very poor decision.

“They say these things even themselves out over a season, but I’ve not seen any evidence of that in my time at the club. We’ve not had much luck at all.

“We’ve had rookie referees for three big games in a row which makes no sense to me.

“The decisions that have gone against us have been game-changing which is very frustrating. We wouldn’t have lost at Plymouth if Liam had stayed on the pitch.”

Posh have suffered several bad decisions this season including a handball goal scored by Blackpool at Bloomfield Road and goals against Walsall and Southend wrongly disallowed for offside.