BASINGSTOKE Town manager Jason Bristow was furious after a refereeing blunder dashed his side’s hopes of what he believed would have been a home win against Poole Town.

The Dragons started the second half trailing to a Will Spetch goal scored in added on time just before the break.

However, just 70 seconds after the interval Zidane Akers and George Bennett combined and Sam Argent turned on a sixpence to fire home an equaliser.

The players celebrated and ran back to the halfway line and at this point the referee ran over to his assistant at the Town end of the ground.

After a short discussion, the Basingstoke goal was wiped out and to the disbelief of the whole of the crowd, they were awarded a free-kick just outside their own area for offside.

As expected tempers boiled over, George Bennett was booked and then captain Charlie Kennedy was shown a yellow and red card, but this was only because referee Tristan Greaves thought he had already booked him.

Never were the home fans chants of ‘You don’t know what you are doing’ more justified.

A livid Basingstoke boss Bristow said: “I have never seen anything like this before, awarding a free-kick to us after we scored at the other end of the pitch.

“He told me afterwards he had got it wrong, but this has cost us the game. It is an absolute disgrace.

“I felt we would have gone and won it after scoring.

Then to add insult to injury, Poole scored a second goal from Marvin Brooks, when he was well offside, but ironically this time there was no flag from the assistant.

Talking about Poole’s second goal, Bristow added: “He was yards offside it was a poor decision.

Bristow was full of praise of his players and said: “We told the boys at half time their performance was not good enough and they came out and gave a really good second half display and deserved something for it.”

Despite trailing 2-0 after 68 minutes, the home side had all the play for the rest of the game, after Brooks so nearly added a third a minute later.

On 78 minutes, the Dragons set up a grandstand finish, when Sam Smart wriggled through the centre of two Poole players and was then up ended in the penalty area by Spetch.

The Poole man was shown his second yellow card and from the spot Dean Stow made it 2-1.

Stow was then immediately replaced by another striker Ben Wright, as the home side went all out for an equaliser.

Argent fired just inches over and then Bennett went close as they piled on the pressure.

As the game went into added on time, a ball to the back post from Bayliss, saw Argent just fail to get a touch.

In the first 45 minutes, the major talking point of the game was when Adam Grange was stretchered off after a collision with Stow.

It looked nasty at the time, but the winger was given the all clear and returned to the dug out in the second half Poole had the better of the first half, but Dan Collier did force the best save of the game from Luke Cairney, as the midfielder tried to side foot it home.

Town now have a week to regroup and will go again at Frome on Saturday.