PHIL Parkinson was left fuming with the officiating of Trevor Kettle after watching his Charlton side slip to a 2-1 defeat at Bristol Rovers.

Within thirty seconds of kick-off, Dominic Blizzard came in extremely late on left-back Grant Basey, leaving the Wales youth international with what at first was feared to be a broken leg.

And although the visitors looked second best up until a late surge saw Therry Racon net a consolation goal, Parky felt that several key decisions left his side on the back foot from the get-go.

He commented: “It wasn’t the greatest game we’ve been involved in. Starting with the challenge on Basey where if that’s not a straight red card then I don’t know what is.

“I haven’t seen it on the telly but as soon as the tackle went in I thought the lad’s got to be sent off and the referee’s got to deal with that, from my memory he wasn’t a long way away from the incident.

“I’ll have to see it again on the TV but the ref’s got to deal with that straight away and if he does it’s a different game.

“I’ve seen a lot of lesser challenges than that in the Premier League that have resulted in a sending off.

“The frustrating thing is that there was a vociferous home crowd tonight who I thought basically refereed the game – every time they appealed, the ref blew his whistle.

“If the challenge on Basey had been the other way, our player would definitely have been sent off because the crowd would have influenced the referee.

“He’s one of the most experienced referees and we’ve had him several times but I just felt that tonight he got it wrong.”

Though the Basey challenge was by far the most controversial incident of the game, the 7,000+ crowd at the Memorial Stadium as well as those watching at home on Sky saw several questionable calls from Mr. Kettle throughout.

Indeed, the game could easily have seen a penalty at each end in the first half, and among other things Parkinson wasn’t pleased that Nicky Bailey wound up with a caution for diving.

He added: “I don’t think Nicky would have gone down if he had a chance of getting the ball.

“The ref didn’t do us any favours the whole night, and I think he capped it all when he put six minutes up at the end when we had one player stretchered off and one taken off with a head injury, four or five injuries overall.

“That equates to about eight or nine minutes and as it happened with us scoring a late goal, that could have been important to us.

“Bristol Rovers are a team who were low on confidence and with one more chance you never know, it could have been the three minutes we needed to get back into the game.

“Don’t get me wrong, we gave Bristol Rovers two goals and we’re disappointed with our defending, the discipline of some of our play and after going a goal behind we lost our composure on the ball and with everything going on around us.

“But, equally, I don’t think we got any help at all on the night.”

Officiating aside, Parky saw plenty in his own men that left him frustrated, but also enough to give him hope for the crucial upcoming fixtures in the Addicks’ attempt to salvage their automatic promotion hopes.

He mused: “It was probably our best spell when reduced to ten men and I said to the boys at 2-0 with ten men the game was over but that was the best period we played.

“We started relaxing, passing the ball and playing like we had all season and we didn’t see enough of that today.

“When we pass and play simple football we’re a good side but when we try to over-complicate it we look average and at times we looked average tonight.

“Defeats are never a good thing but we need to respond to this performance and the events of tonight, and we’ll work hard to do that against Yeovil.

“I felt that Bailey and Sam were the two who would give Rovers problems out wide ahd when we did get the ball to them in the first half they did.

“Lloyd had one or two great runs and one which flashed across the six yard box, Nicky threatened at times from the left hand side but we didn’t get the ball to them enough with enough quality, and that was disappointing.

“I’m aggrieved about one or two things but equally we should have done a lot better with the goals we conceded.

“We gave a team which wasn’t playing with a great deal of confidence a great lift and the first was a goal for nothing, how someone can be given six yards of space in your eighteen yard box from a corner is beyond belief.”