That goal

Just thought it was very unprofessional by Town for not taking more care and the referee who clearly was not watching.

What is interesting is the blowing the whistle thing as often you get a free kick in that part of the pitch and the ref will blow to stop the game/award the free kick but will not blow to re-start the game.

Then if you get a free kick outside of the box and a wall is set up the ref will blows to tell everyone he is ready and the attacker can tale the kick, you often see kicks re-taken because the ref is not ready, as ever consistently inconsistency refereeing at this level! In fact w could the ref had been "ready" yesterday if he was not looking at the ball.  

All that though is immaterial as the goal stood and actually I also think Pete has called it right.

Only hope EVERYBODY learned a few things from that game and s it happened so early will get it out their systems fast.

Quoted from Astute

One question. What is your GK doing being out that far? Haven't you got an outfield player that can kick the ball?

On yesterdays viewing..... no  

I'm certain Clarke was giving it to Mckeown to take. If it was a pass he would have in some way reacted but if you look at him, he has no hesitation in saying what the intercourse is that guy doing. In no way is Mckeown at fault, but it's probably his reaction that convinces the officials.

Officials got it wrong. Either it was a roll back to Macca for him to take the free kick or the Coventry player wasn't ten yards away. Quite simply the goal should have been disallowed and the free kick taken.

Yesterday's incident was a complete one off. Some comments on here are completely out of order.

Clarke has given the ball to another player to take a free kick hundreds of times throughout his career  and watched the same thing happen in thousands of games without incident.

It is a grey area but players always pick the ball up to place it themselves when taking a free kick and players often roll it to the kicker for them to place it.

The ref had a get out clause to save embarrassment.  "I wasn't ready and hadn't signalled for the free kick to be taken". Made us take it again and wait for the referees signal. End of problem.

If Clarke had chipped it up to Macca and he caught it would the ref give a free kick for handball? I don't think so.

What's the bets next game one of our players tries the exact same thing and gets booked for delaying the taking of a free kick.

It was a one off freak that will never get repeated. It had to be us didn't it?

Spot on mimma. Clarke wasn't being stupid at all, everything about his body language indicated he was just rolling it back for macca to take. It was poor sportsmanship from their striker to take the ball like that. However I do agree on the flip side you could class it as 'quick thinking.' It was a 1 in a 100 situation, the majority of strikers wouldn't have thought anything to it.

Quoted from toontown

People saying if it's a quickly taken free kick then u can't expect opposition to be 10 yards BUT Berrett was booked for obstructing when they had a free kick and tried to take it quickly. I thought at the time fair enough but let's see if u apply that to both sides. You can't say Berrett acquired more of an advantage than their player did. Also Berrett wouldn't have been sent off if he hadn't have received that booking. (stupid foul to give when already booked tho)

But Berrett intentionally prevented their player from taking a quick free kick. Their player didn't prevent us from taking a free kick but capitalised on our schoolboy error.

"It was a one off freak that will never get repeated. It had to be us didn't it?"

My words exactly yesterday were why does it always happen to us
I still think the referee got it completely wrong and having seen it on the tv I'm convinced from Clarkes body language he was not taking the free kick but signalling to Macca to take it instead.
Just hope we've learnt our lesson but I won't hold my breath, we saw last year how many goals we gave away with our silly passing about at the back.

Give over the striker did what all good strikers do he took advantage of a stupid mistake.

Clarke for all his experience should have left it for Macca to sort out only one man at fault Clarke.