Linesman was the only person who couldn’t see the ‘goal’ - Walker

Josh Walker said assistant referee Amy Fearn was to blame for failing to award his team a goal in their defeat to Northampton Town on Saturday.

The on-loan midfielder has been in inspired form during Boro’s last two matches and it was from his corner that Scott Laird directed a shot at goal on Saturday only to see Liam Davis, defending on the goalline, clear the ball to safety despite the ball being a foot over the line.

The Boro players appealed for the goal only to be turned down by Fearn and referee Andy D’urso, and Walker believes the officials were the only people on the pitch who failed to spot that the ball had crossed the line.

“To come away losing a game is always disappointing,” Walker said afterwards.

“From my angle taking the corner it was a clear goal. You can see on the other side the linesman’s already started running up so she’s just having to guess.

“If she is doing the job correctly she should be waiting there and she would have seen it was clearly a yard over the line.

“Everyone on the pitch, both sets of fans, she’s the only one who can’t see it.”

Northampton took the lead in the first half when Ryan Gilligan, son of Boro’s head of youth Jimmy, scored on 14 minutes but despite seeing teammate Darius Charles controversially sent off in the second half, Walker believes Boro were the best team in the second period and could have taken all three points.

“They got their goal, which was disappointing from our point of view.

“The second half we came out, went down to 10 men really early on and we basically played 45 minutes with 10 men and I thought we were the team that looked like we had 11.

“We worked them hard, we pressed them high, we got on the ball, we moved it about and created chances [and we] should have taken a couple of those chances.

“It’s frustrating whenever you lose a game of football, but the way we’ve performed in the second half we need to take it into [our next game] and make sure we play that way for 90 minutes and we’ll come away with a good result.”

Stevenage make the trip to Bury this Saturday with snowfall due on both Thursday and Saturday in the north west and temperatures are set to hit -3?.

Both Michael Bostwick (five yellow cards) and Darius Charles (straight red) are suspended for the game, but Joel Byrom could make the squad after returning from injury to both play and score in the 4-0 Herts Senior Cup win over Hemel Hempstead Town on Tuesday evening.

Terry Dixon, Chris Beardsley and Stacy Long were also on target as Boro fielded a strong-looking side with manager Graham Westley giving his squad a run-out ahead of a busy Christmas and New Year schedule.