Kirkcaldy & Dysart: Boss Craig Ness miffed at ‘surreal and strange’ refereeing display in cup defeat

YM manager Ness watched his side recover from being 3-0 down at half-time – Rosyth scoring through Darren Ormiston, Tam Hampson and Jason Penman – to battle back to level through second half strikes by John Smith, Jay Bridgeford and Ryan McEwan.

But, in a game which saw both sides reduced to nine men after red cards were issued to K & D pair Mark Wilkie and Jason Nouri and the visitors’ Ormiston and Callum Strang by whistler Robert Bowie, Zata Matifadza won it for Rosyth with a goal 10 minutes into extra time.

“It was a brilliant cup tie from a neutral point of view,” Ness told the Fife Free Press. “For me, what this level’s all about.

"Two good teams going at it. Rosth started very well, got the opener but we responded back very well and then the referee started in my opinion, what was a very surreal and strange afternoon watching his performance.

"He gave a penalty for handball that for me’s never a handball. Our guy’s kind of asked him why, got a straight red card and that started off a series of events that were not just baffling to me.

"I think there were 100-odd people in the ground, boys from our management, their management and other teams’ management that were watching as well.

"And all of us were kind of agreeing that they’d never seen a referee’s performance like this in their lives before.

"But fair play to Rosyth. And fair play to our guys, they looked dead and buried at half-time 3-0 down and they came out with the attitude of: ‘Let’s just give it a go, it’s a cup tie’.

"And they worked their socks off and got back into it, up until we got our second red card, again a poor decision by the ref, I thought once we got the third one we were going to go on and win.

"The pendulum just swung back in their favour slightly with our second red card and we ran out of steam, we never had anything left in the tank.”

K & D continue their East of Scotland League first division campaign at Camelon this Saturday with kick-off at 2.30pm.