Alcester Town facing anxious wait over outcome of abandoned Birmingham County FA Saturday Vase tie against Sutton Rangers

The returning Connor Perry-Holmes missed an early penalty and Blackwood explained that as the striker went to force in the rebound, he collided with the Sutton goalkeeper, which caused a melee involving “15 or 16 players”.

The Alcester boss told the Herald that once everything calmed down, two Sutton players and Perry-Holmes were cautioned.

Odane Barnes then put the Romans ahead from Dan Sutton’s corner but the visitors were adamant there had been a handball.

Although there was a yellow card for a Sutton player because of a handball on the line, he was shown a second yellow for dissent and was sent off.

Another player from the visitors was then sent to the sin bin – a spell of ten minutes on the sidelines before returning to the pitch – prior to the match restarting.

Sutton then found themselves down to eight men as their goalkeeper was sent to the sin bin for dissent, said Blackwood, after another penalty was awarded. Perry-Holmes fired in the spot-kick for 2-0.

Blackwood went on to say that a late challenge in front of the dugouts on Kieran Fitzgerald led to the tackler receiving a second yellow, leaving Sutton with seven men on the field and two still in the sin bin.

It was at this point that the game was abandoned by the referee but Blackwood told the Herald that Sutton’s management team were “threatening to call their players off the pitch” just before this decision was made.

FA rules state a game can continue if a team has seven players on the pitch but Blackwood said he believed the referee abandoned the match “for his own safety”.

Reflecting on “the most bizarre game of football I have ever seen”, the Romans boss said: “It’s the most controversial 20 minutes of football. I’d go as far as to say it was embarrassing, it was a complete farce from start to finish.

“Sometimes it’s easy to blame the referee and think he’s done things wrong but I could not see anything more he could have done.

“He was a young lad and I believe every decision he made was the right one. Perhaps the sin bins just needed a conversation with both captains to keep the emotions in check.

“However, I think he was struggling to deal with all the verbal abuse and decided to abandon the game for his own safety. There’s a national shortage of match officials and we were scrounging around at the last minute to get the game on.

“After what happened on Saturday, I can see why referees do not want to officiate games anymore.”

The Romans are now anxiously waiting to see if the result will stand or whether they will be ordered to get the game played for a third time.

According to the Birmingham County FA’s rulebook for their cup competitions, ‘in all cases where the executive is satisfied that a match was abandoned owing to the conduct of one team or its members, they shall take such action as they consider appropriate’.

Blackwood said: “I will be furious if we are ordered to play the game again. I have a bitterly disappointing feeling it will, though, because Sutton had the minimum seven players on the pitch and only 20 minutes had gone.

“If a game gets abandoned twice then the county FA can reverse the tie to the opposition’s ground and if that happens, it would be a real sucker-punch. This was a game where I decided to give three of our 17-year-olds the chance for some minutes, one started and the other two were going to come on later in the game.

“That opportunity has been taken away from them for now. I just hope common sense prevails.”

Sutton manager Paul Sullivan said in a report which will be sent to the Birmingham County FA that within the first 20 minutes ‘the official proved he was incapable of protecting the players and could not control the game’.

Sullivan claimed that the melee after the first penalty was because of a ‘blatant stamp on our goalkeeper’ and that two Alcester players were seen raising their hands to two players and ‘grabbing them around the throat’.

He went on to say: ‘[The referee] proceeded to say he saw the Alcester players raising their hands but wasn’t sure which player it was so just booked my players. I fail to understand how that is the correct approach as both sides should have been punished fairly. Him allowing their players to run 50 yards to grab my players round the throat is not showing any protection.’

Sullivan said that the referee had missed a ‘blatant’ handball for the opening goal and that his goalkeeper was sent to the sin bin for asking the referee why he awarded a second penalty.

‘We now have eight players on the pitch as the game continued and the official had lost all control of the game’, added Sullivan.

‘Roughly 25 minutes into the fixture, he again shows he is incapable of protecting our players but as soon as one of my players makes a tackle he proceeds to send another player off and then blow the final whistle and abandon the game due to him feeling unsafe.

‘I asked him with respect and calmly why he feels unsafe and if anyone has threatened him... He replied no one has threatened him, he just deemed the game unsafe which I believe was an excuse to abandon the game as he knew he had lost all control.’

A Birmingham County FA spokesman told the Herald that when a game gets abandoned in circumstances like this, it would launch an investigation and consider reports from the referee, club officials and eye-witnesses.

The spokesman added: “Once all that has been reviewed it will be passed over to our disciplinary department who will take over the investigation and make their decision.

“If the clubs request a hearing then we will hear what they have to say. An independent commission will make their decision and then our clubs and leagues department will make a decision on what happens to the game based on the independent commission’s findings.”

When asked how long an investigation might take, the spokesman said: “We try to deal with them within four weeks.”