The first sending off was the sort of challenge some refs give yellow and some red. No complaints about this ref giving it a red as it was a dangerous challenge but would like to see more consistency from officials as a whole. I don't think there was anything malicious from Ben Fairclough as LP has said a forwards challenge, he's an exuberant young player and you try to take that side of his game away and he'll lose the impact he's had on many games. Yes it cost us yesterday and no doubt may cost us in the future but he wins us a lot more than odd game he loses us.
The second sending off like most others I didn't see as it was off the ball. What II will say is that those that did see say it was retaliation, if that is the case why did their player go unpunished? No red, yellow or even a free kick?
There are 2 other incidents that I thought the ref got wrong:
1: A horrendous challenge on Connor Marshall, the ref correctly played on. Once the attack petered out he should have gone back to their player and given him a card, it was similar to Faiclough's, borderline between a yellow and red offence. Given he gave Ben a red their player should have had a red as well.
2: We had a corner which was delivered in, the ball came to Tom Ward who was quite clearly having his shirt pulled, he still managed to win the ball and tee up Jones who was then pushed, both offences were penalties but nothing was given.
All in all I thought the ref managed the game well but in 3 of the 4 big decisions he had to make he made a mess of them and all 4 went against us. So on that basis I thought the ref was pretty poor.