Any game against Newport tends to bring with it an understanding that you’re up against a team that collectively knows how to work the referee as they look to gain any advantage they can, at every possible moment.
“I was pleased with the referee, he was very good in terms of not always giving in to the screaming and shouting, and other things that are going on,” manager Chris Beech said. “It’s always disappointing to hear that kind of thing because in my day I played with a broken foot for three weeks.
“It was at the three-week point that the physio decided we should go for an x-ray, and after that he told me there was good news and bad news. The bad news was that it was broken, the good news was that the x-ray showed the injury had happened three weeks ago, so I only had another two weeks of rehab left to do.
“I don’t know what goes on now but the referee tried to not get sucked in. What I will say is that if he books it early on it stops. He chose not to, but I still think he did very well.”
“I’ve explained before, it was the reason we took Jon Mellish off,” he added. “He had a yellow and we didn’t want to be in a situation where the referee is having to decide whether or not to give him another.
“You’re always concerned because they’ve got some people and players that have been round the track and played higher and been promoted, so they know how to wear the referees down.
“There was a few, I think they were their directors - there was a lot of screaming going on. We’ll leave that there. I don’t like it.
“If you can try and gain an advantage from a prominent moment, I don’t know, I don’t want our players having sore throats, I want them to have sore feet from running hard.
“It’s not nice to hear but it’s in the modern game sometimes. I’ll be honest, I think the referees are pretty aware of it and hopefully they’ll clamp down on it stronger and make the game fairer. I don’t want to teach our players to play that way, I really don’t.
“Our new kid on the block Jack [Armer] did it a little bit after he scored, he’d never done it before, and he got Barrow’s bench a little bit annoyed. He did it two or three times and that’s not like him.
“You don’t want to see it but if the referee acts, makes the booking, has a word, it’ll stop. It can’t carry on because if the player does it again he’s sent off. The officials are tested by this in some games but, like I say, only they can stop it from happening.”
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