Footballers attack match referee

Video footage be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed showed as­sis­tant ref­er­ee Kirt Charles be­ing as­sault­ed by play­ers from the Mor­vant Cale­do­nia team while the match of­fi­cials were mak­ing their way off the pitch.

It is un­cer­tain what caused the al­ter­ca­tion, but it is un­der­stood that play­ers from the East­ern Stal­lions (Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed) were fu­ri­ous over the Army's win­ning goal from Jer­wyn Balt­haz­ar which ap­peared to have come from an off-side po­si­tion in the 90+5 min­utes of the match. Fol­low­ing the goal the play­ers and sup­port­ers protest­ed, nev­er­the­less, the game was com­plet­ed and the Mor­vant Cale­do­nia play­ers con­tin­ued their protest of the goal with match ref­er­ee Crys­tal Sobers and Charles.

But yes­ter­day Guardian Me­dia Sports was re­li­ably in­formed by play­ers from De­fence Force that ref­er­ee Sobers al­leged­ly re­act­ed to con­stant ver­bal chal­lenges from the Mor­vant Cale­do­nia play­ers.

Her ac­tion led to an im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion by the play­ers, which then trig­gered Charles to spring in­to ac­tion to de­fend his fel­low ref­er­ee.

Video footage showed Charles at the end of a bru­tal at­tack, as play­ers and of­fi­cials from the De­fence Force play­ers mak­ing at­tempts to quell the mat­ter.

When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia Sports on Thurs­day, Kyle Duprey who was the Match Com­mis­sion­er, was re­luc­tant to com­ment, say­ing the mat­ter was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by League of­fi­cials. He ex­plained, how­ev­er, the match was pro­fes­sion­al­ly done by some of the coun­try's top of­fi­cials (Crys­tal Sobers - match ref­er­ee; with as­sis­tants Kirt Charles and Ains­ley Rochard). He said Mor­vant Cale­do­nia play­ers ap­peared to have been en­raged with the last-minute goal, with such a hefty cash prize ($250,000) at stake.

Key of­fi­cial Richard Piper could not be reached for com­ment on Thurs­day. It is un­der­stood he had been en­gaged in meet­ings all day, try­ing to se­cure a le­gal opin­ion of how to treat with the mat­ter. Piper had al­so been at­tempt­ing to get the ac­counts of sev­er­al eye­wit­ness­es.

With the goal, the De­fence Force won the game 1-0 and re­turned to the top of the stand­ings with 25 points with one round of match­es to go. They lead Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed by one point go­ing in­to their fi­nal game against Matu­ra Re Unit­ed on Sun­day.

Cale­do­nia will be up against FC San­ta Rosa's 'Big Can­nons', who were at the los­ing end of 7-0 drub­bing by Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers at La Hor­quet­ta.

SOURCE: T&T Guardian