Town are left frustrated by early Christmas cards

CHRISTMAS came early at Sincil Bank as referee Richard Clark went card crazy in the second half on Tuesday night, writes Mark Wood.

He booked a total of eight players, six of them Hatters, and gave Luton boss Gary Brabin two unwanted presents into the bargain as he dismissed both Alex Lawless and half time substitute Jamie Hand for two bookable offences.

It was an astonishing display from the referee who had officiated sensibly in the first half and didn’t even reach for his notebook until the 65th-minute.

A clearly irked Brabin said: “At half time George Pilkington had to come off concussed after an elbow.

“Glees (Dan Gleeson) has had to come off (for treatment) after having a whack in the face with an elbow.

“There was a challenge on Brunty (Ryan Brunt) that was X-rated and yet he deemed our couple of little trips – he couldn’t wait to get the cards out.

“You’ve seen that. I don’t have to go into it too much without getting into trouble over that.

“I thought Alex after being out for a long period had just started getting back some of his form.

“Obviously it’s going to be a wrench losing two players like that.

“When it doesn’t go for you they seem to pick up all the little points. I just felt like every little marginal error we made was punished and they seem to have all the luck on their side which is hard to take when you drop two points.”

A lack of consistency was also a problem, with Clark booking Robbie Willmott for walking off the field too slowly but ignoring Jean-Francois Christophe’s trudge from the pitch after the Imps had equalised.

Philosophical striker Danny Crow said: “Robbie got booked for walking off and he’s (Christophe) done exactly the same. If he’s going to do it he’s got to do it for both teams.

“It kind of sums his day up but we can’t keep blaming the ref, we seem to be blaming the referee every week

“We’ve got to look at ourselves.

“He was being kind of fair and in the first half he was letting things go.

“Then we got two sendings off. I don’t know if it was silly on the boys’ part, I didn’t really see, I was concentrating on things around me.”

The view of taking responsibility rather than castigating the officials was shared by defender Janos Kovacs.

He said: “We don’t need to do this, blame referees, linesmen, we need to look at ourselves and the game.

“It’s another negative (the sendings off). We’ve lost another two players for a minimum of one game.

“We lost those two key players, important players.

“Yes it was silly. With a booking you cannot make those kind of tackles, but to be fair, in my eyes, not the tackles were silly.

“I think we were silly second half because our shape wasn’t as good as it was in the first.

“We were too far from each other, we had too big a gap from each other and that came right through the team.

“That’s why we were chasing players, chasing balls and that’s why we made these kind of silly pull-backs, silly sliding tackles and everything started with the wrong shape.

“It is down to the players, it is down to us to get in the right positions to help your team-mate to make it work on the pitch.

“That’s why I’m disappointed and need to learn from this.”

Town were also on the end of a tough call from the linesman in the first half when he ruled out Aaron O’Connor’s header from a corner after judging the delivery had drifted out.

Kovacs added: “I don’t know, I didn’t see it. But the linesman was in line so I have to say I’m pretty sure he saw it and made the decision.”

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