Obviously I wasn't at Halifax so I didn't see the incident with the Goalkeeper but the Laws state that in the opinion of the Referee the Goalkeeper, in handling the ball outside the Penalty area must be denying an OBVIOUS goalscoring opportunity for it to be a sending off offence. It seems that in this case, in consultation with his Assistant Referee (not Referees Assistant - another one the media get wrong all the time), it was decided that no OBVIOUS opportunity was denied
Originally, from our vantage point miles away I couldn't exactly see that it was handball. However, if it was, the keeper should have gone. Two Alty players were chasing it down, if he hadn't handled it i.e. missed it there would've been an open goal.
Thanks for the rules Phil, I was aware of that, however, it is very useful to point them out for anyone who wasn't aware. I perhaps didn't make it clear what I meant.... I couldn't see any argument for how he didn't deny a goal scoring opportunity by the hand ball. For me, Senior was the only person who could have got there, and of course, if he had have missed/left the ball, it would have been an open net.
I would be very interested to hear what the ref's explanation was!
Apart from that decision, i agree with Jimmy, I thought he had a reasonable game, you never agree with every decision, but there were not that many I thought were obviously wrong.