Accrington Stanley striker hopes for red card reprieve (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Accrington Stanley striker hopes for red card reprieve

11:00am Monday 22nd March 2010 in

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STAR striker Michael Symes hopes Accrington Stanley will have enough evidence to launch an appeal against his three-match ban for a red card in Saturday’s 4-2 home loss to Rochdale.

Stanley had led 2-0 but Symes was sent off with the game at 2-2 after a scuffle on the ground with Rochdale’s Jason Taylor, who also received his marching orders.

Stanley’s 17-goal top scorer will now be suspended for tomorrow’s home game against Burton as well as fixtures against Bournemouth and Barnet.

Rochdale boss Keith Hill said after Saturday’s game that he intended to appeal Taylor’s red card and Stanley manager John Coleman was waiting to see the video to assess whether to do the same.

The Reds would risk the ban being increased to four matches should they fail, and they could be left with little grounds for an appeal if television cameras did not capture what was an off-the-ball incident.

Symes, though, is desperate not to miss key games in Stanley’s play-off push.

“It was just a bit of a scuffle on the floor,” he said.

“It was just handbags. I don’t know why he sent the pair of us off and now I’m going to miss three games. If the gaffer thinks we’ve got enough to appeal then I hope we do that.

“It’s three big games coming up that I wanted to be involved in.

“I’ll be gutted if I miss them, so hopefully we can sort it out.”

Coleman said: “I know it sounds like Arsene Wenger but I honestly was looking in totally the opposite direction, as I think the referee was.

“It did affect the game because it was 2-2 and they scored the next two goals at 10 v 10.

“They were losing a midfielder, we were losing our main focal point.”