Ref Robs Us Blind, In Front of 12k Fans

By: Ben | October 6th, 2009

perth glory Yep, as the title suggests I’ve got no doubt we was robbed, mate! Glory finished up on Saturday arvo with a 1-1 draw with cellar dwellers NQ Fury.

I was in attendance and enjoying the frivolities of The Shed for a lovely Saturday afternoon. Free tickets for the under-15s (on school holidays), plus Robbie Fowler’s presence, the possibility of top spot, a good timeslot and some spanking weather, meant over 12,000 fans crammed in.

But in front of one of Glory’s biggest crowds in years, ref Ben Williams produced a shocker and in the end, scored NQF’s equaliser.

After a typically bright start to the game by Glory, things kinda petered out and the first-half ended scoreless, but NQF were reduced to ten men late when Ufuk Talay took a dive. As you can imagine, it was confusing in The Shed at the time, but he still got a friendly ‘Cheerio’.

Off for beers at the break, but the unusually large crowd meant catering wasn’t well…catering for such intake. Indeed, the beer queue was a slog but finally when all was sorted we settled back in to instantly see Mile Sterjovski brought down in the box.

Penalty! Up he stepped. No worries 1-0 to Glory f$ck yeh party time in the Shed. We started chanting “WE ARE TOP OF THE LEAGUE”.

The problem was, we had them down to ten men, we had a 1-0 lead, we were playing at home, yet the lads didnt seem to want to add to the tally.

It was a shame but we still had NQF’s measure, with Andy Todd, Chris Coyne and Naum Sekulovski all over any attacking threat from the Fury.

That was until the ref intervened. I simply can not understand this goal.

NQF free-kick, Tambouras header was parried skyward by GK Tando Velaphi, who decided to try and catch the ball rather than tip it over the net.

Tando then proceeded to catch the ball, before Chris Grossman pushed him beyond the line. Clear foul.

Not according to the ref, who somehow completely got it wrong. I’ve never seen a worse decision and I doubt I ever will.

I watched FoxSports coverage of the game on TV after the match and it was clearly conclusive. Despite the commentator labelling the blame on Tando, who probably did the wrong thing, but actually achieved what he was trying to do, until he got fouled.

Nevertheless, we should be able to score twice against NQF (who were pretty toothless). Dave Mitchell will cop plenty of criticism and rightfully so, I don’t like what he offers the team and we didnt push on here.

So it ended 1-1. It’s disappointing to miss the chance to go top, but hopefully the lads can work out what went wrong and sort it out next time. And, of course, next time hopefully we can get a capable ref.