Longford Town boss Stephen Henderson blasted the referee as Longford fell to Athlone Town with four red cards brandished.
Longford’s Aodh Dervin received his marching orders for handball on 66 minutes. With 90 minutes on the clock Kyle O’Connor and Athlone’s Vladislav Velikin saw red.
While Henderson saw red himself in injury-time as Athlone claimed a second El Classico of the season.
“It’s the norm in League of Ireland isn’t it!” declared Henderson. “It’s not a league of Ireland game if you don’t get three or four people sent off”.
“It’s a problem, everybody knows it’s a problem, I’m gutted with it” declared Henderson. “I spoke to Ian stokes about can he talk to the referee about getting conned. He never got to me on it to be honest with you”.
“That’s really unfortunate on Kyle” added the Longford boss. “If you look at Aodh Dervin! I was going to say 99.9% of referee’s would have given a free before the handball! He was pushed to ground and you’re man was jumping on his back and he gave two frees against him. Its madness”.
“Ross Fay has gone in for an x-ray on his ankle, that wasn’t a free apparently. This is where I’m getting really frustrated” explained Henderson.
Frustration
“I’ll tell you why I’m frustrated” Henderson went on. “We have a fantastic bunch of young players. We've 12 players sitting at home genuinely injured”.
“We had to get this group of lads together to take part in a local derby. We wanted to make amends of the first game of the season”.
“We’re absolutely gutted we couldn’t get the equaliser for the fans here tonight who were brilliant. I would’ve loved to go up and thank them personally, but the referee deemed I’d kicked a Lucozade bottle aggressively”.
Elsewhere, Longford Town travel to Henderson's old club Cobh Ramblers on Monday.
TABLE | SSE Airtricity Men's First Division
Athlone Town and Wexford are the climbers after their wins this evening 🧗
Roll on Bank Holiday Monday and another full round of fixtures! 🙌#LOI | #LOITV pic.twitter.com/2BJPr4Y8QK
— League of Ireland (@LeagueofIreland) June 2, 2023
