Michael Flynn insists all the pressure will be on Mansfield on Sunday after his Newport County side earned a battling but controversial 1-1 draw in the first leg of their play-off semi-final.
Padraig Amond ensured County will go to the One Call Stadium on level terms after he scored an 83rd minute equaliser, but both the penalty decision that led to the goal and a first half decision not to send off Newport skipper Mark O’Brien provoked outrage from Flynn’s opposite number David Flitcroft.
Newport fell behind to an early goal from CJ Hamilton, but the key moment of the match happened in the sixth minute when referee Charles Breakspear chose only to show a yellow card to O’Brien after he tripped Tyler Walker, who appeared to have a clear run on goal.
Flitcroft blasted: “There are some big decisions he’s got wrong and it’s a travesty because we’re professionals.
“You work really hard for these games and the fans travelled a long way and I feel we’ve been let down.
“You just want the best officials to referee these games, we’re not asking for a lot. There are plenty of great officials who will be on VAR duty this weekend they could have used.”
Flitcroft also felt the penalty decision was a poor one, although Conrad Logan did seem to bring down Newport substitute Adebayo Azeez.
He added: “I’m just not sure how much they respect the League Two play-offs. We’ve been positioned on a Thursday which gave the FA an opportunity to give us a hell of a good referee.
“There are probably 60 to 70 higher ranking referees in this country that should have refereed the game tonight.”
But Flynn disagreed and insisted O’Brien did not deserve a red card, before claiming his own side had recovered from a slow start to finisher the stronger.
Asked about the referee, Flynn said: “The only thing I’d say is we have goal-line technology tonight, so why not have one of the 20 full time referees as well?
“It’s the play-off, so why not? We want to keep getting better, so why not have a Premier League referee here tonight?
“But the referee has got that (the yellow card decision) bang on, because it’s run straight through to the keeper. Our boys are saying it wasn’t even a foul. He went down very easily.
“But I’m not here to criticise them. They are streetwise.
“We had a slow start. They were the better team in the first half. They won all the first balls and all the second balls, too.
“But we got back into game and in the second half we were by far the better team.
“In the second half, I thought there was only one team was going to score. We had five or six good opportunities.
“The crowd were fantastic. A full house here is always a good experience here at Rodney Parade. That’s 11 games unbeaten, now. I don’t know but it could be some kind of record for us.”
“All the pressure is on them. We finished the strongest. We’ll pick a team to go there and cause them problems.”
Amond reacted quickly when his own 83rd minute penalty had been saved by Mansfield goalkeeper Conrad Logan.
The Stags had led from the 12th minute through a goal by Christopher Hamilton, but tired in the final stages, enabling Newport to achieve a rousing finish.
When Logan was exposed and upended Newport substitute Azeez, he made amends from the spot kick, but could only block the effort back to Amond who scored his 23rd goal of the season.
