Northern Ireland were desperately unlucky to lose at home to Switzerland in the first leg of their 2018 World Cup playoff on Thursday night.
While the visitors looked much more threatening throughout and enjoyed the bigger share of possession, Michael McGovern was not a busy man and had the Swiss goal not come from the penalty spot, there would likely be everything left to play for when the sides meet again on Sunday.
While the tie is certainly not over, it really is an uphill battle for Michael O'Neill's men as they will be forced to attack from the start in the return leg, and speaking to Sky Sports shortly after the final whistle, the former Shamrock Rovers boss could not disguise his disgust with what was an awful refereeing decision.
It’s staggering really that the referee can give that penalty decision in that situation. He was six yards from the incident, he has no one in his line of sight.
Corry has just gone to block it, his body is turned and the ball actually hits him more on the shoulder than the arm so it is incredible.
I thought he had blown for a foul or for offside, so to give a penalty for that, when nobody appealed, it is bewildering really. In such a defining moment in the match we feel very hard done by.
The tackle by Schar was a borderline red card, the referee certainly didn’t do us any favours tonight.
He's not wrong.
In Sky Sports' post-match coverage, the point was made that while the referee was only yards away, he had positioned himself so that he could not see Corry Evans' arm at the moment of contact, thus could not have known for sure that it was a handball.
It was a guess, and a bad one. Still, O'Neill is right when he says that his side is still in this, and he believes the anger in the dressing room may spur his players on.
We have to forget about it, I thought the players’ reaction was very good. It’s very difficult when you go behind in a game of this magnitude to an incident like that but I thought they reacted very well.
We are still in the tie, we are only 1-0 down and maybe we will get the good fortune of having a referee who will give us a decision like that in the second leg.
I won’t have to pick them up, you can tell there is anger in the dressing room, they are very aggrieved by what happened. They still believe they are in the tie, that’s the most important thing, it’s not like we are going there with nothing to play for.
Hopefully they can turn the tie around and make it to the World Cup, as for a goal like that to be the reason they fail to do so would be extremely unfortunate.
