The Wexford Ladies footballers played out a 1-03 to 0-06 draw in a very miserable Aughrim yesterday afternoon.

About 30 minutes beforehand it looked in the balance as to whether the fixture would go ahead considering the torrential rain that had fallen, along with the very strong wind blowing.

However, the major talking point after this game, was not the weather, but the incredible performance of the referee.

During the course of the 69 minutes of play (60 normal time plus 9 minutes of added time between both halves) the referee Paddy Smith awarded 67 frees, along with free advantages on 14 other occasions, giving a grand total of 81 fouls during the game (in his opinion).

Of those 81 ‘fouls’, 43 were awarded to Wicklow, while 38 were awarded to Wexford.

Despite awarding this large number of frees, the referee issued no cards throughout the game. This illustrates that the majority of frees awarded could be described as harmless and questionable. It made the game very frustrating to watch and no doubt very frustrating to play.

The other bone of contention highlighted by Wexford Ladies Football was the amount of injury time played in the second half.

On further investigation, it appears as though their grievance is justified.

Wicklow equalized from a free which was awarded 5 minutes and 50 seconds into second half added time.

The total amount of injury time played in the second half was 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

The total duration of injury stoppages in the second half was 2 minutes and 50 seconds.

Although there were a total of 10 subs made in the second half, 1 of these was made during an injury stoppage and 2 were made during the waterbreak.

The other 7 subs consisted of 3 double subs and a single sub. All of which took a grand total of 1 minute and 10 seconds.

This would amount to 4 minutes of added time. The decision therefore to play over 6 minutes and a half minutes of injury time was very questionable.

In terms of the general play, Wexford started the brighter, getting the opening two points of the game courtesy of frees from Catriona Murray and Amy Wilson.

It took Wicklow almost 21 minutes to score, but they managed to score 3 points in the remaining minutes of the half to go in at half time with a 0-03 to 0-02 lead over the Wexford girls.

Ten minutes of the second half went by before Wicklow registered the next point of the game to double their lead. Wexford responded 5 minutes later when Amy Wilson kicked Wexford’s only point from play to leave the score at 0-04 to 0-03.

Five minutes later Wicklow opened up their two point lead again, before Ciara Banville blasted home a goal into the roof of the net to put Wexford into a 1-03 to 0-05 point lead with 5 minutes of normal time to go.

There was no score for another 11 minutes until Marie Kealy pointed a Wicklow free after 6 minutes and 10 seconds of second half injury time to level the game at 1-03 to 0-06.

Wexford will play at home to Longford in the next round on the 6th of March.