Town boss Mick McCarthy felt his side should have claimed all three points from their 1-1 home draw with Blackburn Rovers. The visitors scored from a late freekick but McCarthy believes the Blues ought to have been awarded a penalty in the dying seconds when David McGoldrick was fouled by Lee Williamson.
"Bollocks, that’s the quote for you, that’s just exactly what I said,” McCarthy said afterwards.
Did he have any complaints regarding the freekick from which the visitors scored their goal?
"Not really,” he admitted. "I could see why he gave it, I have to be honest and I could see why he sent [Matt Kilgallon] off as well because the first one was a blatant professional foul.
"The second one, I think it’s a genuine attempt for the ball, but he doesn’t get the ball and he makes the referee make his decision.
"It was a wonderful freekick by us, a wonderful freekick by them. We had enough chances, we’ve hit the post, we had one off the line, Didz has had a one-v-one and the keeper made a good save.
"We really should have put it to bed and we gave the ball away twice. We gave it away in their 18-yard box once, we gave it away in the middle of park, they put it on top of us, they got a freekick, which is just what they wanted, a corner or a freekick, and they benefited from it.
"But we just kept them interested. And yet, at the end of all that, we should have had a penalty in the last seconds.
"It’s a penalty but I don’t think for one minute he was ever going to give it at that stage, I think he’d had enough badgering at that stage from all parties.
"I waited to come off, I didn’t go and say anything to the referee. I’m not into berating the refs. Just have a look at it, it should have been a penalty.
"I shook his hand, what’s the point [of arguing], he’s not going to change his mind. He might get the hump and book me just for saying it.”
McCarthy says his Blackburn opposite number also thought it should have been a spotkick: "I’ve just spoken to Gary, he didn’t see the penalty differently.”
He added: "I thought the first half was pretty ordinary and there weren’t many chances. Gestede took Tommy on and got a good shot in, they got a cross in.
"We had a good cross and half a chance. There was nothing really in the first half. In the second half we were the dominant team, with or without 10 men.
"After they were reduced to 10 men we had our chances. I don’t blame Gary for saying [they deserved the draw], fair dos, they stuck at it and if you’ve got 10 men and you stick at it, you think they’ve deserved something. But we could have been home and hosed.”
Having dropped four points in the final moments of the last two games, McCarthy says they now need to pick them up elsewhere.
"I’m not coming in here moaning about my team or how we’ve been playing recently,” he said. "I think we owe each other four points. We owe the club four points, so we’re going to have to get them somewhere else.
"But it’s another point in my pocket, you can’t take it off me, it’s on the table. We might end up in the play-offs by one point and then look back and say ‘That was the point’. It’s the tally you end up with at the end of the season, I don’t get wrapped up in all that nonsense.
"I think we should have gone on and won that game, but fair play to them, fair play to Gary’s team, they stuck at it. They kept going and they got a great freekick, a great goal. I can’t do anything about it.”
McCarthy confirmed that skipper Luke Chambers missed the game through illness - a bug has been going round the club - and is a doubt for Tuesday’s game at Cardiff.
Luke Hyam won’t be involved due to a hamstring problem but better news is that Daryl Murphy could be back: "He tells me he’s training on Monday, so if he is there’s every chance he’ll play [on Tuesday].”
Blackburn manager Gary Bowyer believed his team deserved the point: "We got our just desserts, we thoroughly deserved it.”
Regarding the red card, the Rovers boss felt referee James Adcock should have penalised Conor Sammon: "It was a foul on Matt Kilgallon and [the referee] can’t wait to send him off.”
Did he think the earlier incident in which Kilgallon was shown his first yellow card had some bearing on the referee’s decision?
"Look how long it took him to consult and then he made the decision that it was a yellow card,” Bowyer continued.
"And then in the second one, he doesn’t even consult. If he thought that the first one was wrong, he shouldn’t then make that decision on the second to correct the first, if he thought it was wrong.
"But I didn’t think it was wrong, I thought the first one was correct because there were players who were covering.
"That’s something that we’ll have to take up with the referees’ association.
"Unfortunately, the lad suffers an injustice but we can’t appeal that. If it was a straight red we could have appealed it and then they would have seen after the game that it’s a foul on Matt Kilgallon and we would have won our appeal.
"But because it’s two yellows we can’t appeal. How crazy is that? Yet the decision is still wrong. That’s something for them to look at.”
He added: "But I’d rather talk about the spirit and the character and the never-say-die attitude of a such a young group going down to 10 men. Phenomenal.
"I thought we were good value in the first half, their goalkeeper’s made the save of the game from Rudy Gestede and we really stuck at it and we just felt that there was something there for us today before the game and certainly at the end it was a magnificent freekick.
"If those two freekicks were in the Premier League they’d be shown over and over again. They were of outstanding quality.”