Penalty decisions go against Shaymen

Halifax Town boss Chris Millington said his team was denied two clear penalties in their 1-0 defeat at Hartlepool United last Friday, writes Tom Scargill.

Former Halifax striker Mani Dieseruvwe scored the winner from the spot, but Millington said his team should have been awarded two spotkicks of their own after Hartlepool's goal.

"It probably was," said the Town boss when asked if he thought Hartlepool's penalty was the correct decision, "but then we should have had two penalties, we've had Adan George pulled back, clearly pulled back, everyone in the stadium can see it and the referee's on the spot but has decided not to give it.

"And then there's been a handball in the box late on which we've seen back, they're clear, stonewall penalties, we don't understand why.

"There's been an awful lot of decisions today we don't understand. Every time Hartlepool players went to ground they get a free-kick - we're honest, we stand up, we try and contest possession and when we go down, we go down under significant pressure and yet we're not getting the decisions.

"So I've got a lot of questions for the officials."

Millington was disappointed his team was unable to follow up their fantastic win against Chesterfield last time out.

"We highlighted the fact that no team has beaten Chesterfield this season and then backed it up with a win, we wanted to buck that trend," he said.

"And pretty much every team that's been beaten by six or seven has then backed it up with a clean sheet and a draw or a win, so we wanted to buck that rend as well by imposing another defeat on Hartlepool.

"But they both went to form because we couldn't back up a win against Chesterfield with a win today and they were a much different team to the one that faced Gateshead on Tuesday night."

Millington said his team were below-par in the first-half.

"I think we started poor, we were second-best to a lot of things," he said. "I don't think they (Hartlepool) were great but I thought we weren't great either.”