ADAM HINSHELWOOD was ‘baffled’ at the refereeing decisions made as the nine-men of York City fell to a 1-0 defeat to Eastleigh.

Ryan Fallowfield and Zanda Siziba’s red cards saw York reduced to nine men, before an 84th minute strike from Luke Croll gave Eastleigh the lead, with goalkeeper George Sykes-Kenworthy allegedly being fouled in the build-up.

Hinshelwood was left feeling fuming after the defeat, which sees York just three points ahead of the Vanarama National League relegation zone with two matches remaining, with the City boss feeling as if the performance of his players wasn’t up to standard.

“I’m a bit baffled,” Hinshelwood admitted.

“I was waiting for him to show a yellow [to Siziba], I’ve seen him show a yellow to Ryan Fallowfield and I’ve turned my back.

“I’ve heard the crowd and I’m waiting for him to give a free-kick on George and it just hasn’t come.

“I’m just baffled by some of his decisions really. Ultimately, we’ll look at what we can control and what we can control is better.

“There were five-and-a-half thousand that turned out to watch us today and we didn’t give their goalkeeper enough to do.

“I feel that we’ve been let down a little bit, but ultimately we were nowhere near good enough today.

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“I’ve enjoyed watching us play in recent weeks, but I certainly didn’t enjoy watching us for large parts today.

“Of course it’s a foul [on Sykes-Kenworthy], he’s got hold of him, but you have to braver to come and deal with it.

“It’s definitely a foul, I don’t think that the ref is in a good position to see, he’s blindsided and needs help from the linesman. Everyone needed to see that it was a foul, but I thought that we were poor today, really poor.

“We’ve got to give them credit because they’ve come here, sat in a low block and made it difficult for us, maybe we don’t have enough quality to break teams down.

“We just need to deal with the ball when it comes in the box, and I don’t think we did well enough with that today.

“It was a big like a rugby game here, playing for set-pieces, putting it into the corners for their long throws and set-pieces. Fair play, you’ve got to deal with that. It was one team trying to get the ball down and play football, but ultimately we’ve come undone and have not come away with any points.

“For large parts we were comfortable and got the ball into the final third on numerous occasions, but nothing really came from it.

“On a day like today the key difference might be a long shot, and we had a few of them in the first-half, but it’s pointless when you’re going to be putting them over the bar.”

Hinshelwood also admitted that he hadn’t seen any replays of the decisions yet, but was clearly frustrated by the performance of referee Dean Watson.

“I’ve not seen them [replays] yet, and maybe when I look back on them [I’ll change my mind], because I’m just going off of my initial reaction.

“I’m gutted with what I’ve felt, but when we look back at them we might see why they have been given or not. With our goalkeeper you can see his shirt coming away from his body, when you see that you’re waiting for it to be given.

“Len’s [Lenell John-Lewis] gone in for a 50-50 and has been given a yellow card, it just didn’t seem to add up with the consistency today and we’re all about consistency with our players, being consistent. All we ask is that the officials are the same as well.

“It’s come from our own mistakes again, being sloppy on the ball.

“We had so much time out there that we didn’t know when to speed up the play, when to take our time with it and when you’re playing against a low block like that, the first goal is massive.

“You need to score for a chance and we didn’t do enough today.”