Planet Swans ArchivesQuite what went through Neil Swarbrick’s mind just before half time when he gave a penalty for a dive by Marcus Rashford is anyone’s guess but it just sums up a season where refereeing decisions have been some of the worst you could ever expect to see in top flight football.
Rashford had made his decision to go down long before he even got close to the challenge from Fabianski that television replays clearly show not to have been a foul despite the actions of the Man Utd player. Swarbrick thought (well, probably not but you know what I mean) long and hard before pointing to the spot for the foul after a first half where the Swans will have considered themselves very unlucky not to have been at least one goal up.
Wayne Rooney scored the penalty but it was the injustice of it all that will stick in the throats of the Swans fans who have been the victims of so many bad decisions this season.
You could argue that justice was done when Sigurdsson scored his perfect free kick but when you consider that the home team’s goal should not have been there then justice could only have been done had the Swans taken all three points.
And had Llorente made any kind of contact with a Sigurdsson free kick towards the end of the game then that justice would have been served and the travelling support given what a real team effort had deserved.
But it was not to be and we have to be content with what remains a good point in our battle towards safety, leaving us two points behind Hull with three games to go of which two are at the Liberty.
The weekend could though have been so different and is really a tale of two penalties – the one that should never have been today and the one that was missed at St Mary’s yesterday.
To a man today though we battled for it and could have been excused if the heads had dropped at half time. Fernandez for me was a rock at the back but he was not alone in putting in a superb performance and three more games like that are just what is needed and we have the capability in those games to get the points we need.
But we do also need the right decisions to be made as well and we can only hope that the incompetence in the official ranks has disappeared by our next game
<#mauswa>
