Blues boss Paul Jewell says he wasn’t just surprised but amazed by yesterday’s furore regarding his misquoted post-match comments at Birmingham. Last night the FA confirmed that they wouldn’t be taking any action against the Town manager for the criticism aimed at assistant referee Amy Fearn after the penalty incident towards the end of Wednesday's game.
Jewell said: "I wasn’t surprised, I was amazed because there was just absolutely no comment that I thought that could be construed as sexist.
"I answered a question. I think it had been reported wrongly that I went into the press conference and came out with that opening gambit. I answered a question. I think people know what the question was — ‘I think everyone to a man saw that it was a penalty, Paul’.
"I thought that the linesman or woman or assistant referee had a really good view of it. If the lady had been a man I would have said exactly the same thing. I thought it was a poor decision by the officials. That she’s female doesn’t make any difference for me, she got that decision wrong.
"I went in the referees’ room after the game, which I’m entitled to do half an hour after the match, and asked them how they saw the penalty decision. She and the referee gave their point of view, I gave mine, while listening to the assessors and the fourth official. I said ‘goodnight’ and there was no problem.
"I think there are a lot of people who haven’t got anything better to do than write about stuff that wasn’t true, people who weren’t there and who are ill-informed.”
Jewell says he’s not expecting to talk to Fearn about the matter: "I’ve no plans to speak to her unless she gives me a ring. I think it’s gone. She hasn’t taken offence to what happened.
"She’s an official at a Championship game, she knows it’s a passionate game. She’s there on merit, she’s not there because she’s a woman. I have no issue with women officials in football.
"I think Amy’s a good assistant referee. She got that one wrong, the referee got it wrong, I get lots of things wrong.
"It was a game-changing event that I was upset about and just the fact that she’s a woman had no bearing on it whatsoever.
"I spoke with David Allison yesterday, who is in charge of the referees’ association [Professional Game Match Officials Board], and he said he’d spoken to Amy and she had absolutely no problem with it.
"There was no intent and if you look at the comments and if you were there you know that it was blown up out of all proportion.”