By Chris Wright
Barnet drew 2-2 with Cambridge in the Conference yesterday but Edgar Davids’ side could and should have pinched all three points in the dying seconds when a looping ball bounced off George Sykes and over the line in the 92nd minute.
The only problem was, due to a smoke canister being set off in the stand behind the goal, the assistant was unable to track the ball properly as it ricocheted off a Cambridge defender on the goal-line and looped up into the air above the crossbar.
With thick smoke drifting out from the terraces over the pitch thus obscuring his view, the linesman deemed that the ball had gone out of play before it hit Sykes when the replays seemed to show that the ball remained in play all the while…
Pies’ sympathy is definitely with the lino on this one; we can only imagine that it’s quite tough to evaluate trajectories through dense white smoke and, as it was the Barnet fans that set off the grenade in the first place, bully to them!