Halifax’s manager calls Chesterfield’s late victory in a contentious match a “body blow” and says it should not have stood.
Chris Millington, the manager of Halifax, questioned a few of the officials’ rulings during his team’s dramatic 3-2 loss to Chesterfield.
Adam Senior of the Shaymen, manager of the Spireites, midfielder Tom Naylor, and referee Aaron Jackson were all shown the door.
Both camps had good right to be upset with Jackson’s performance, who completely lost control of the game, especially in the second half.
Millington believes Jackson got the decision to award his team a penalty correct, which Blues coach Danny Webb agreed with, but the Halifax boss had doubts about some of his other decisions, feeling they should have been given another spot-kick and that Joe Quigley’s 91st minute winner should have been ruled out, calling it a ‘real body blow’.
Millington told the Halifax Courier, “I felt we were denied a penalty in the first half when Milli Alli went past his man, got the wrong side of him, and received a shoulder in the back.
“Milli Alli is not going to go down in the box when he has the ball at his feet and is driving at goal unless someone brings him down, and it was clearly a shoulder in the back that brought him down,” the referee said. I therefore believed that we ought to have ended the game at 2-2.
Despite being the third time this season that Quigley has scored the game-winning goal off the bench, Millington argued that it shouldn’t have counted.
He explained: “I don’t underestimate the challenge of refereeing a game like that where both teams were absolutely fully committed and the atmosphere was electric, both sets of supporters were right on their mettle, they were fantastic, so I don’t underestimate how difficult it is to referee that.
“But I also believe that there was a foul on Jo Cummings in the build-up to Chesterfield’s winner, the players are certain, it looked like it to me, it looked like it was a clear foul.
“For the ref not to give that at such a crucial moment in such a crucial area of the pitch when it’s a foul on our last man, it feels like a real body blow that.”
And Millington also had doubts about whether Senior should have been sent off for his challenge on James Berry.
“Clearly we’re at a place where there’s a very good group of players, a crowd who are really up because of where the team is in the division, and the way they’re playing because they play an exciting brand of football and every game seems to be a 3-2 or a 4-3.
“So we knew we were going to have to be prepared to deal with some of their threats, the threat in the wide area is definitely something you have to deal with when you come to Chesterfield, and also set-pieces, they’ve scored more goals off set-pieces this season so far than they’ve scored using any other method.
“We’d prepared thoroughly for those two threats but we knew some of their vulnerabilities – the high line, we knew that’d be an opportunity for us and we felt, as the game went on and their pressing dropped in intensity, we’d have the opportunity to dominate possession a bit more and I think that’s how it worked out.”
He added: “Clearly it’s frustrating to go 1-0 down and I couldn’t see the goal very clearly because it was on the far side, so I’m not exactly sure on the passage of play and how they unpicked us, but it looked from my side like a really slick move, ball goes across the box and a fairly simple finish for a very good footballer.
“So that was frustrating to concede so early, and then conceding off a set-piece when we know what a threat they carry off set-pieces, and we’d prepared to the best of our ability to deal with them. Their lad was just more committed to winning the first contact than ours.”
