The irate figure of Hume City manager Lou Acevski was spotted watching over the officiating party as referee Lucian Laverdure reached into his pockets to provide Ramazan Tavsancioglu a second yellow card of the match with the consultancy of his linesman.
South Melbourne’s Milos Lujic had begun his journey towards the opposition area, locking in on a loose ball down the right flank of ABD Stadium, only to be halted by the leg of Tavsancioglum who appeared to glance the leg of the opposition striker.
Laverdure – one of the league’s most experienced referees – paused for a moment, only to acknowledge the flag of his assistant, before consulting her and deciding on a second booking of the game for the veteran centre-back, his side then going on to lose 2-1 to South at ABD Stadium.
“No where near [a booking],” Acevski asserted post-game.
“Milos has done well to pull the wool over the eyes there, he’s dived in and the referee didn’t actually blow the whistle. The linesman actually [signalled].
“The referee was five-yards away and the linesman flagged and he’s given him a yellow. He wasn’t even going to give him a free-kick.
“That’s the truth, the video is there as evidence. That’s what really hurts, we just want some consistency, I’m really over it at the moment.”
His first yellow card was perhaps a little more clear-cut, leaving what appeared to be a high leg in on midfielder Marcus Schroen in his attempt to win a loose ball in defence.
Regardless of the circumstance, the sending off was a key moment in the loss to South Melbourne, and to make matters worse, Hume gifted South an incredibly soft goal from the resulting free-kick, something they could hardly afford going into the break a man down.
Ironically, South manager Chris Taylor lauded his team’s ability to win the ‘moments’ in his post-game wrap – having seemingly come on top in the biggest moment of the entire contest, albeit not entirely the doing of his own side.
“[The] moments went for us in the game,” Taylor said.
“That’s what we rely on, but [it was] a little bit of character building there as well.”
He too had his take on the controversial decision, declaring he didn’t have any concerns with the issuing of either booking, however throwing Acevski a bone by admitting he’d “have viewed it a little differently” had his side been on the receiving end.
“I can’t always comment on those things – all I can say is that they were both on the last man, both were fouls,” Taylor said.
“I didn’t see anything wrong with the two yellow’s but I’m sure if I was sat on the other bench, I’d have viewed it a little bit differently.”
The truth most likely lies somewhere in the middle, on technicalities, both bookable offences, but on another day could have slid past a referee.
Tavsancioglu’s second bookable offence perhaps didn’t leave the mark on Lujic that the lumbering strikers’ reaction suggested, but it was late and the boot was high – if there was contact, it’s hard to argue that the yellow card shouldn’t have been shown.
As for Taylor’s assessment of Tavsancioglu being the last man on both occasions, there was each time a defender facing goals and covering their veteran defensive teammate – that shouldn’t be used as fair reasoning for the fouls being worth a booking.
Acevski didn’t hold back in the rest of his assessment of the tie, also declaring his side were the only ones trying to play football.
“I took away that we actually tried to play football the whole game and we did really well – we had a lot of opportunities,” Acevski said.
“Only one team played today and I thought we lost it ourselves where we gifted them two goals tonight. But it was a pleasure to watch from my perspective, it was a good performance tonight.
“Everybody was fantastic, it was a great effort. Nothing but praise for the boys.”
His message to the players was quite similar post game, telling his boys they could have and should have won the tie, even with the 10 men.
“I just said to the boys, ‘we gifted them two goals so they didn’t really beat us with good football.’ We had 10 men for a good sixty minutes and that’s a massive bonus for us,” he said.
“We should have scored maybe two or three goals in the first half, second half if we had a bit of luck, could have scored one or two. Again, we’ll move on and hopefully we get three points next week.”
For Taylor and South Melbourne, it didn’t matter about the fashion that the win came in, the most important part was their reaction to their shock loss to Richmond SC last round.
“We were delighted, they are a good side and they’ll be there at the end of the season,” Taylor said.
After last weeks performance [against Richmond SC] – especially in the last 30 minutes – there was a lot of redemption for the players. To actually go out and perform – I thought we did very well.
“The boys that came off the bench contributed as well but it meant a lot to our boys after last week.”
Image: Mark Avellino