Blackpool were defeated 2-1 by Barnsley at Oakwell after a controversial late goal.

Blackpool boss Ian Evatt states he ‘can’t understand’ how a handball wasn’t given to rule out the winning goal in his side’s 2-1 defeat at Oakwell.

The late decider was nodded home by Amani Richards in the closing stages, but only after the ball had been knocked in his direction by what appeared to be an illegal part of the body.

Prior to that, Cameron McGeehan and Josh Bowler had found the back of the net within three minutes of each other, with both teams having opportunities to take the three points before the eventual controversial winner.

Reflecting on the game and the major talking point, Evatt said: “I can't quite understand how that's not given as handball, to be honest. I saw it live, clear as day - his hand was clearly above his head and he flicked the ball on.

“I've watched it back since, and it gets worse every time I see it. It’s incredibly disappointing to be on the wrong end of that decision.

“We're in the hands of officials to make the right calls at the right times. Tonight, it's hugely gone against us.

“Having said that, we had great opportunities to be in front and take the lead, and not just chances, like critical chances that we have to be more clinical with.

“Weirdly, I feel more positive now than I did after Saturday with what I've seen from my team.

“The spirit, togetherness, fight, and quality at times. I'm proud of them, and I've just said to them the same thing there - we can feel frustrated, we can feel a sense of injustice, but we have to make sure that we regroup and get ready for Saturday now.

“It’s night and day from where we were last season - that's why I feel more positive. It looks like my team, it looks like a Blackpool team, it looks like what we're trying to create here. I'm proud of the players for that.

“In the end, it's a decision that officials just can't get wrong. There's four of them out there. It was clear for everybody. To get it wrong is bitterly disappointing.

“The worrying thing for me is he (the referee) thought he flicked it on with his head, and that's, again, incredibly disappointing, because the whole stadium, I think, could see what had happened.

“I was a player for a long time, player reaction is normally a sense of what's really happened, and when your players react like that, you just know that it was an incredibly bad decision.

“It wasn't borderline. It was blatantly obvious, and it cost us the game.

“It's as tough as it gets, to be honest. As I said, I've seen it back, I've seen the still, but I didn't need that to know it was wrong. I knew straight away from my eyes, and I knew from my player reaction what it was that was wrong.

“I just can't believe with four of them out there they can't make that right call and right decision.

“Incredibly frustrating; look, it's hard being an official. I get it, and I have sympathy for them when it's close, when it's tight, when it happens at speed, but for me, that was so obvious that it just had to be given, and it wasn't. It's mind-blowing.

“Well, we'll report it back and they'll flag it, and I'm guessing he'll get a bit of a telling off, or a ticking off, but he'll still be reffing Saturday somewhere, and we'll have to pick ourselves up and go again.

“That's the nature of the business we're in. It's my job to make sure we focus on ourselves and not on everything else.

“It's about us, and we had it - we had an opportunity to make things easier for ourselves with the chances that we created.”