WHEN the referee becomes a major talking point after a game of football it is generally accepted that all is not well.
Which is why the name of Steven Nicholls will still be discussed not only in the committee room of Glebe Park for the foreseeable future, but in the Michael O'Neill household as the Brechin manager comes to terms with having two of his players ordered off in a highly competitive, if not overly physical, encounter.
Tomorrow night, Stirling travel to Cowdenbeath with the aim of establishing themselves as front runners for a play-off place in the battle for promotion alongside Morton who, despite their defeat at Stranraer, are on course to win the second division.
Mark McNally, a competent and capable central defender for Stirling talked yesterday of "hanging in and seeing what happened" with reference to the title - even though he and Allan Moore, the team manager, accept that Morton are all but bomb-proof at the top of the table.
"We'll try," said McNally. "We'll give it a go. We still have Morton to play. There are teams either fighting for a place in the play-offs or fighting to avoid relegation, so every game from here on in is crucial and in the second division things turn very quickly.
"We have put ourselves in a good position. Our aim at the start of the season was for the play-offs and after the win at Brechin, barring a disaster, we will be there. There is also a very slim hope that we might catch Morton."
The home side, however, already behind to a Steven Bell goal, were down to 10 men after little more than half an hour when Darren Smith was shown a red card for a trip from behind on David O'Brien.
The Brechin management team were unimpressed by the referee's lack of leniency on the issue. They were right to adopt such a stance, though their loss of substitute, Chris Hughes, four minutes from the end for his last-man challenge on Chris Aitken, could not be contested.
Aitken's subsequent penalty-kick conversion made it 3-1 to the visitors, as Stuart Devine had scored just before half-time while Iain Russell fired home his 17th goal of the season for the home side who, despite their lack of personnel, put an inordinate amount of pressure on the opposing defence.
Sean Boycroft's late goal for the visitors ensured the game ended with a scoreline which flattered the victors. Just like Nicholls' overall handling of proceedings, during which he also flashed a raft of yellow cards, it left O'Neill fuming.
"Players at this level deserve better," said the Brechin manager. "They work hard all week. They are disciplined, come to training on cold nights and they then come out on a Saturday and get that level of officiating which was embarrassing and spoiled a good game of football.
"I thought Darren Smith's tackle deserved a booking but it was not a straight red card. There just didn't seem to be any consistency in the referee's performance. The referee will say he did his best but on this occasion his best wasn't good enough."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article