Brady calls for retrospective action against Salford midfielder after 'really bad' challenge

Cobblers manager Jon Brady believes the FA should be able to take retrospective action against Salford City midfielder Elliot Watt for his challenge on Josh Eppiah during Saturday’s game.

Watt went in high and late on Eppiah just after half-time but referee Robert Lewis failed to award even a free-kick, let alone show a yellow card or send him off. All three Sky Sports pundits on the day agreed the challenge was worthy of a red card.

The FA can only look at incidents if the referee does not see it during the game or fails to mention it in his report, however four days have now passed since the match and there has been no suggestion that Watt’s challenge will be reviewed.

That means Watts will go unpunished and he is free to play for Salford against Sutton United this weekend.

"Sky got it right on the day,” said Brady. “Watt should be sent off for the tackle because it's really bad. It's late and he's stamped down on Josh's foot.

"I'm not sure if something can be done about that because it was on Sky but I hope so. There are a lot more angles available compared to normal games when there's only one angle so hopefully they can take a look at it.”

That was far from the only incident that aggravated Brady, who remained frustrated with the officials even after the dust had settled.

He added: "As everyone can see, Eppiah isn't offside and he scores a legitimate goal, and then Ryan Watson's hand is well away from his body. OK, the shot might not be on target, but it's a handball and to me it didn't feel like ball to hand.

"We feel a bit aggrieved but there's nothing we can do about it now. We have to dust ourselves down, get ourselves right and be ready for Saturday's challenge.”

But Brady did accept that his side made life hard for themselves with their subpar first-half display at Moor Lane.

He continued: "We know we can be better than what we showed in the first-half and we have talked about that this week. It's for our learning to get it right.

"We have always said that it won't be perfect and we will have a few ups and downs. It's definitely a half that we can be a lot better with but we turned it around in the second-half and ultimately we should have had the draw.

"We left ourselves a lot to do but we showed great character again to come back and it was just unfortunate that the officials didn't get some key decisions right.”