Dundalk manager Stephen Kenny described the penalties awarded to Bray Wanderers in their 3-1 victory over the champions as "bizarre" and "exceptionally poor" decisions.
With Cork City making it nine successive wins since the start of the season, ther Lilywhites find themselves nine points adrift of the table toppers after Wanderers condemned the home side to their third league defeat of the campaign in controversial circumstances.
Referee Jim McKell pointed to the spot after he adjudged Stephen O'Donnell to have pushed Aaron Greene to the deck.
While O’Donnell made amends by levelling the match, McKell awarded Bray their second penalty in the 64th minute when Chris Shields was booked for what appeared to be a well-executed sliding tackle on Dylan Connolly and Gary McCabe again made no mistake from 12 yards out.
Ryan Brennan sealed a 3-1 win to move Bray level on points with Dundalk, but speaking to RTÉ Sport after the match, Kenny couldn’t hide his anger at the decisions from the referee.
"I felt neither of them were penalties," he said.
"I think the second one especially is bizarre really. Number one it wasn’t a free-kick, Chris Shields won the ball brilliantly, but the free-kick was given.
"Secondly, Dane Massey’s been fouled from a free-kick that Gary Rogers took comfortably and a penalty is given. I just can’t understand for the life of me how that is given.
"I think they are some exceptionally poor decisions...bizarre really. I’m very, very disappointed.
"It’s hard to take really, very, very difficult to accept."
"I don’t ever remember in 15 years such dramatic incidents in relation to penalties being given"
Kenny said that Kell wouldn’t speak to him after the game when questioned about the penalty decisions and it comes just days after the Dundalk boss spoke of his sides difficulty in being awarded penalties of their own.
"You can deduct from that what you want," he said.
" You would like to think at the start of every game that a referee would have no preconceived notion or wouldn’t be agenda driven...that’s what you would hope.
"I don’t ever remember in 15 years such dramatic incidents in relation to penalties being given."
The 45-year-old insisted his gripes over the penalties weren’t to detract from Bray’s win, and said they must get back to winning ways sooner rather than later.
"Bray are a good team. I’m not taking any credit away from them. They have a lot of good players and they defended well, but we were in the ascendancy generally in the match.
"The decisions were incredibly harsh...really poor I thought.
"From our point of view, we’ve just got to concentrate on ourselves and get ourselves back on track.
"Our focus at the moment is not on winning titles, it’s on winning matches and we’ve got to bounce back next week."
