Barry Moore is puzzled by the drop-ball interpretation that cost Tonbridge in their defeat by Oxford City.

The referee stopped the game, with City in possession midway inside the Angels half, after home midfielder Tom Parkinson suffered a head injury.

The restart was gifted to them by the official and they duly went on to add the clinching second goal in Saturday's 2-0 win at Longmead.

“I don’t know the rule but when there’s a break in play I’m sure you can contest a drop-ball,” said Moore.

“But the referee said we had to step back two metres, he dropped the ball to them and they got in and scored.

“He’s stopped the game because of a head injury and because they had the ball at the time, he wouldn’t let us contest the drop-ball.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it where the team gets the ball dropped to them. You either contest it or kick it back to them.”

It wasn’t the only incident that frustrated Moore as Angels slipped to defeat.

“We had a stonewall penalty turned down in the first half,” he added.

“How he hasn’t given it, I don’t know, he’s actually given a free-kick to them.

“I’m sure if he saw it back he’d probably hold his hands up and say he’s made a mistake.

“We also had a goal disallowed at the end, which would have given us a couple of minutes to try and get an equaliser.

"I thought we played well until the first goal but we didn’t take our chances when we were on top and a couple of key decisions have cost us."

Moore liked the look of on-loan Colchester striker Jake Hutchinson, who came on as a second-half substitute.

While it will help his development to sample the physical side of non-league football, Moore feels the 19-year-old is clever enough to stay out of the clutches of National South centre-halves.

“He’s got good touch and good awareness,” said the Angels No.2.

“He’ll get physically stronger as he gets older and it’ll be good experience for him facing seasoned non-league centre-halves.

"But by the look of the lad, he doesn’t need to get involved in the physical battle because he makes clever runs off the ball and it’s a case of our midfielders finding his runs.”

Tonbridge go to Braintree on Saturday, followed by a first Tuesday game of the season at home to Havant.

The quick turnaround could see Angels make use of their 16-man squad.

“Hopefully everyone will be fit by the weekend, we’ve only got a couple of niggles,” said Moore.

“We’re going from one game a week to all of a sudden playing twice so we might have to rotate the squad and we’ve got 16 players we feel we can do that with.

“Braintree’s manager would probably say they haven’t started as well as they’d have liked but from what I’ve read and the highlights I’ve seen, they’ve not had the rub of the green.

"They’ve got a lot of strengths and they’ve got Tom Derry (Tonbridge play-off winner) up there as the focal point. Tom’s a great lad who did well for us.

“Sometimes good players end up leaving but everyone at the club has a lot of respect for him.”

Havant are among the promotion favourites but Tonbridge could do with building on their solitary home win.

Moore added: “We’ve got to start picking up points at home.

“We had 700 fans last Saturday and with no midweek Champions League games it would be good to another big crowd in and reward our fans with a win.”

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