Doyle - Honesty not rewarded

Wolves striker rues referee's penalty call

Last updated: 26th October 2009   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Doyle - Honesty not rewarded

Doyle: Penalty appeal rejected

Related links

Teams

Players

Also see

Kevin Doyle feels his honesty worked against him on Saturday as he refused to take a tumble in Wolves' 1-1 draw with Aston Villa.

In just the third minute of the Molineux clash Doyle was twice tugged back in the box by his Republic of Ireland team-mate and Villa counterpart Richard Dunne.

Referee Peter Walton waved away Doyle's protests as he asked for a spot-kick, with many drawing the conclusion it would have been awarded had he gone down.

But Doyle believes it is imperative players remain on their feet and has vowed to do the same again in similar circumstances.

"They say try and stay on your feet and if you are fouled, you are fouled," he told the Birmingham Mail.

"Just trying to stay on your feet shouldn't alter that. If you go down too easily, you get criticised for that so I tried to stay up and he stopped me from scoring, but the ref was having none of it."

Doyle believes Wolves have received more than their fair share of questionable refereeing decisions this season, having also had penalty appeals turned down against Sunderland and Portsmouth.

The in-form striker believes small clubs often miss out on big decisions, as he added: "Is it harder for teams who are promoted to get penalties? I think so.

"Steve Coppell used to say it when I was at Reading.

"We were getting to the stage where we were thinking 'we don't even get them in training now!'

"The one we got in the second half had been a long time coming because in nearly every game we've had a blatant penalty.

"Probably the ref went in at half-time and found he should have given one to me at the start so when we looked like we should have got one in the second half, he gave it straight away."