Grimsby Town manager calls penalty decision ‘horrific’ following draw at Newport County.

“Referees make mistakes, and that was 100 percent a mistake.” David Artell thought a draw for Grimsby Town against Newport County was a fair result after a back-and-forth game with several contentious calls.

There were no goals in the encounter, but there was enough of action to remember, notably Newport’s penalty, which was saved by Mariners goalkeeper Jordan Wright but elicited a passionate reaction from Artell after the game. Town’s road winning streak came to an end, but they made careful not to lose a game that could have easily gone any way. Grimsby kept back-to-back clean sheets thanks to Wright’s penalty save and other straightforward stops. Their head coach was very pleased with one aspect of the result. “I thought both teams could have won it, and both could have lost it,” Artell told me. “It was a competitive game.” On the one hand, I’m happy with the clean sheet and the continuation of our unbeaten record away from home.On the flip side, did we do enough to win? Maybe on another day. We had some excellent opportunities, but so did they. So perhaps a point is a reasonable result. On another day, we score our chances and win by two or three nil, while they score theirs and do the same. “The important thing is that if you can’t win the game, don’t lose, and we probably would have lost that last year, so it’s good that we didn’t. The back four, together with Jordan, have been excellent in recent games, and we must continue that trend.” Kieran Green received his fifth yellow card of the season, and he will face another suspension for the next league game at home against Colchester United. Still, his tackle on Kyle Hudlin, which resulted in Newport’s penalty, appeared to be clean. That’s how Artell saw it, and it was one of those days where a few more contentious calls or no-calls could have swayed the result one way or the other.

“The penalty decision was horrific,” Artell stated. “Both benches agreed that wasn’t a penalty. Referees make mistakes, and this was undoubtedly one of them. It was a clean and fantastic tackle.

“I don’t believe the referee had his greatest game. They could have had a penalty early on, and there should have been a red card in the first half when Kamwa almost broke Ty [Warren’s] leg. And we scored a goal that was not offside. The official made some poor mistakes, but so did my players and Newport’s players.”