During the aftermath of Rovers’ disappointing 2-2 draw with Wigan Athletic, which saw the away side fight from 2 goals down to snatch a point, Tony Mowbray spoke to the clubs’ media team and reflected on the heavyweight clash.
“Today feels like a defeat. I thought we showed our quality and our class in the first-half with some scintillating football, but we have to take the positives from today and we have to see the season out and meet our targets and our aims. We can’t do anything about today anymore, but we’ve had some great moments and scored some great goals, but today was a difficult game.
“One aspect which made today difficult was the officiating. Today was a very ‘stop-start’ game and many of the decisions made by the referee didn’t go with the flow of the game and it kept breaking the flow of the game. For us, it was frustrating that we didn’t take all 3 points, but I suppose it was a good game for the neutral.
“I was only frustrated by the referee today because I thought he was guessing decisions throughout. You’ve been in football for a long time, so you know what’s a foul and what isn’t a foul. The referees in this division have to be better at their jobs, in my opinion. I would never question anyone’s integrity, but I would say that as a referee, you have to make proper decisions that everyone can see. Throughout the game, he was making strange decisions and I thought that he was guessing, for example, when someone went over, he took a few seconds to mull over the decisions before giving it the complete opposite way.
“I think officials have game plans before every game, and the lad who’s officiated today’s game has come in with a game plan to let the game flow a bit. For me, he let too much go early on and it seemed as if he didn’t want to blow his whistle inside the first 20 minutes, then before the end, he’s booking people that are never fouls, but we have to let that go now. It’s frustrating for everyone and I think that officials should referee what they see, but that’s obviously not the case.
“Our first goal came from a brilliant reverse pass by Bradley Dack which allowed Adam Armstrong to brilliantly run on the end of it and to put us in-front. Elliott Bennett’s goal was also good, and seeing that Bradley was part of the build-up is satisfying. Overall, the scorer of the goals doesn’t matter, what matters is that we come away with 1 point, when we should have had 3. The hurtful thing is the manner in which they scored. Their goals were quite poor today and had they cut us open and scored wonder goals, I’d have no real complaint. Their second goal is frustrating as nobody has touched the cross on the way in. I’ve told the lads, who are disappointed in the dressing room, that I’m not going to get angry or fall out with them because everybody has put in a performance to be proud of, despite the goals as they showed real commitment, effort, desire and passion, yet we have to improve defensively.
“For us moving forward, we have to keep picking up as many points as possible and as many wins as possible from the 10 games remaining. The team have showed today that they’re able to battle against sides and that they have to quality to go in-front and I think that if we show all the attributes required, we’ll be fine come the end of the season.”
Mowbray’s comments on the match official Mr. Geoff Eltringham, were also recorded by ‘Wigan Today’, as they presented the raw frustrations of the Rovers manager.
“I think the referee had a game-plan, but he didn’t referee the game as far as I could see, he didn’t blow his whistle for the first 20 minutes. People were kicking lumps out of each other, there were fouls everywhere, and he was just: ‘Play on’.
“I can’t understand that. I understand the logic of it, not suffocating the game early on by blowing his whistle, because it was going to be intense game, but he let everything go for 20 minutes, and then the booking of Ryan Nyambe at the end was shocking. The referee was 40 yards behind it – I think he wanted a breather, because he had to sprint to catch up with the play.
“Anyway, this is not a ‘bash the referee day’. I didn’t think he was for us or against us, but I just think his game-plan went wrong for him. I think his plan was to let the game flow early on, and then tighten it up, but he let too much go early on. “He had to get a grip early on I think, but never mind, it’s footy.
“Let’s move on – we’ve got 10 big games left to play, they’ve got 14…and let’s see who comes out on top.”
