Peterhead captain Simon Ferry was furious Airdrie’s equalising goal was allowed to stand after the teams shared the League 1 honours at Balmoor on Saturday.
After Rory McAllister had given the relegation-threatened Blue Toon an early lead, Sean McIntosh pounced on a Graeme Smith error to level 10 minutes before the interval.
Kyle Hutton lofted a ball into the box and Smith carelessly dropped it, although the experienced goalkeeper did appear to be under some pressure from opponents in an offside position.
Ferry said: “Two or three of the Airdrie players were interfering with play because they have affected Graeme Smith’s decision. If that is the rule, it is rubbish. It is a waste of time.”
Ferry certainly has a point, although had Smith just done his job and caught the ball there would have been no fuss.
Ironically, Smith had been the hero in the 20th minute when he superbly kept out Iain Russell’s penalty after Jack Leitch went down under a challenge from Steven Noble.
It was a soft award but a great save as Smith threw himself to his right to keep out the forward’s effort.
All this after McAllister had fired the Blue Toon ahead in the eighth minute with a neat finish once he had outmuscled McIntosh off the ball.
There were not too many chances in the second period, although Aaron Comrie twice came to Peterhead’s rescue by clearing McIntosh and Simon Mensing efforts off the line.
Ferry added: “We know we need to start winning.
“After we scored our goal, we had a 15-minute spell when we started to dominate but then Airdrie came into it.
“They played well but I thought the decisions were shocking by the referee. Even for their penalty, I thought the Airdrie player tripped himself up and, like I said, how their goal was not offside I will never know.”
