MOORS BOSS IN REF RANT AS MAGPIES NICK A POINT

SOLIHULL Moors boss Neal Ardley was left frustrated and bemused after his side were denied victory by a controversial goal in stoppage-time.

It had looked as though an early Justin Donawa effort would be enough for the home side but Maidenhead finished the stronger and Kane Ferdinand levelled with a goal that had originally been flagged for offside, only for referee Aji Ajibola to overturn the decision.

It was a deserved equaliser for the Magpies who had had a similar effort chalked off by the assistant just ten minutes earlier but it was still a bitter pill for the Moors boss to swallow.

Ardley said: “The goal was offside. The linesman has given it and the referee has overruled him, saying the cross wasn’t forward, it was backward and yet the referee was 15 yards outside the box so how he had had a better view than the linesman I will never know.

“That has cost us the game but we need to look at what we should have done. We were all out of shape when we were 1-0 up, trying to see the game out. In the end they probably wanted to equalise more than we wanted the clean sheet.”

Donawa’s tenth minute opener for Moors was a touch of class in an otherwise dull first half. Collecting Callum Maycock’s pass he calmly pushed the ball past the last defender before sprinting through and calmly burying his shot into the bottom left-hand corner.

Moors could have doubled their advantage but both Josh Kelly and Alex Gudger failed to force the ball home amidst a goalmouth scramble while Maidenhead’s only real effort fell to the lively Reece Smith but he shot calmly at home keeper Ryan Boot.

Things improved after the break with the visitors raising their game with Ashley Nathaniel-George forcing a good save before Emile Acquah prodded wide from six yards.

Kelly, playing against his former club, and Jack Stevens had half chances for Solihull before substitute Shaun McCoulsky converted Sam Beckwith’s cross on 83 minutes only for it to be chalked off.

Maidenhead continued to press though and were finally rewarded in the 92nd minute when Ferdinand nipped in front of Boot to tuck away Nathaniel-George’s inviting cross from the left.

Magpies boss Alan Devonshire admitted he was equally frustrated by some of the decisions.

“I don’t know how those goals have been disallowed,” he said. “They have been crossed from the byline and had to go back so how they could have been offside I do not know. At least the referee has had the b ****** s to do it for the second one.

“We were very good second half but we weren’t at the races in the first half. We dug in and we should have won the game.”

STAR MAN: Ashley Nathaniel-George (Maidenhead) ATT: 2,076 ENTERTAINMENT: ★★★★★ REFEREE: Aji Ajibola