Mills’ red card was harsh and he definitely got the ball - but no chance of that getting overturned. He jumped and scissored. You can’t argue he was in full control, therefore, soft as it was, there’s surely no grounds to overturn it. I thought a yellow for both him and their defender (who seemed to shove him in the face afterwards - totally unpunished) would’ve been sensible when watching it live. But sensible officiating was well beyond that ref. He was dreadful - for both sides.
I called it in pretty much the first minute when he failed to book one of their players for a shocking challenge on Ciaron Brown that he had no ability to control a game. From that point no amount of waving his card around at arbitrary (and at times seemingly completely random) incidents was going to work. Just an awful, awful display of how to control a football game by a referee. I’m surprised it didn’t boil over much earlier in truth.
But having said that - both Brown and Smyth’s red cards were absolutely right. The rules are pretty clear this season that you can’t do anything that remotely constitutes kicking the ball away. Both Brown and Smyth were unforgivably dozy for their teams. And I have no clue what Brown was protesting for his second yellow!
Other than a mindless 10 minutes at the end, I was impressed with that today. They were very good, played in a well-drilled manner to nullify our wingback system and Beadle was superb. That save at 1-0 on the brink of halftime was fantastic. To grind out the win when not at our best against a good side is incredibly positive. I thought Manning’s half time change of system was excellent, and a real example of how different he is from KR (who at 1-0 up would absolutely have left it for another 15 minutes of second half to ‘have a look’). Love that Manning identified the problem, didn’t hesitate to fix it and had the personnel to do so. Pleasing all round, and absolutely buzzing with a(nother) win.
(Say it quietly but we’re running out of wingers. Browne, Edwards, now Mills for three games. A problem for another day…)