Linlithgow Rose boss Gordon Herd refuses to slate referee despite controversial penalty call at Swifts

Linlithgow ace Mark Stowe appeared to be fouled on the edge of the Swifts box, but the official instead gave a free-kick to the hosts and booked Stowe for diving.

“There’s a few people have said to me it looked like a foul,” Herd said.

"Decisions change games. We were always chasing Inverkeithing but if we’d got our noses in front I think it would have been a different game because they would have had to have opened up to us.

"I’m a great believer that these things even themselves out throughout the season.

"It’s just one of these things. The ref has deemed it’s not a foul and he’s deemed it a bookable offence.

"I didn’t think it was either. I thought it was a foul for us and I think it was maybe in the box.

"But you can’t blame the referee for not coming away with three points. It was down to us, how we defended and how we played. There’s no fault to the ref.

"They’ve got a hard enough job without us pointing out every wee mistake they make so we move on.”

On this Saturday’s home league game against basement boys Whitehill Welfare, Herd added: “It’s another difficult game.

"Whitehill are fighting for their lives down at the bottom end of the table.

"They gave us a bit of a stuffy time at Whitehill (a 2-0 Rose win on September 25) so it’s a good game for us to bounce back on paper but Saturday highlights that if you’re not at it then you come a cropper in this division.

"So the boys are refocused on where we need to go. We’ve got a league title to go and win, we’re in the quarter-finals of a cup, the last 16 of another cup and we’re in the league cup.

"We’re fighting on all fronts and it’s just about getting that determination back to go again.

"It’s how you react to what happened on Saturday. Good teams don’t get beaten twice.”