A FURIOUS James Ford invited referee John McMullen to explain himself at a York City Knights video review session after watching the Wigan whistler, with an “absolutely appalling interpretation of the rules”, effectively end his side’s chances of progress in the Ladbrokes Challenge Cup.

The injury-hit Knights were eyeing another fifth-round shock as they led unbeaten League One big hitters Barrow 28-26 in a cracking Bootham Crescent contest.

But then McMullen controversially ruled out a “perfectly legitimate” 64th-minute James Haynes hat-trick try for obstruction and immediately allowed two “ridiculous” quick-fire Barrow tries to stand, before then sin-binning York half-back Harry Tyson-Wilson for the last eight minutes.

The tie duly ended 50-28 to Barrow, with boos ringing around the Main Stand as the officials left the arena.

Ford spoke to McMullen on the pitch after the hooter, before shaking his hand.

“I’ve invited him down to training. Let’s see if he comes,” said the livid Knights boss.

“We will go through the clips one by one with me, him and the players – and we’ll see how embarrassed he is.

“We should be talking about people like (Barrow prop) Joe Bullock and how good he is, or Chris Siddons playing 70 minutes, or Tim Spears’ endeavour. But we’re talking about these six individuals (the refereeing team).

“My blokes have worked really hard out there, Barrow have worked hard. Over 900 people have paid to watch the game and they’ve had their entertainment dampened by an absolutely appalling interpretation of the rules of rugby league.

“They were that far off he maybe thought we were playing rugby union.

“The difference between the sides was the referee’s interpretation.

“It was 6-0 in the penalty count until late in the game. Is he joking?

“He’s maybe turned up thinking Barrow would roll us over. You know what – well done.”

He added: “We scored a perfectly legitimate try at a key time in the game, after which with a bit of game management we would have seen the game out.

“But it was ruled out for reasons I don’t know, and they went up the other end and scored two ridiculous tries.

“It’s not the first time this season we’ve had a raw deal.”

Ford suggested Rugby Football League chiefs simplified some rules, such as those for obstruction or laying on.

“The rules are too hard for the officials,” he argued. “The teams of officials are not good enough to have grey areas in the rules. They cannot be trusted to interpret them. They get it wrong week in week out.

“He (McMullen) interpreted the same rule differently in the space of five minutes (ruling out a York try before awarding a Barrow try).

“We’ve seen it in this game, we saw it against North Wales, we saw it at Oxford. In each game we’ve had a raw deal.

“There was one set of six where we could have had three penalties for holding down.

“Everyone in the stands – everyone in North Yorkshire – could see it, apart from the one bloke with the whistle.”

Ford, meanwhile, had only high praise for his troops.

“We were down to 14 fit players for most of the second half, and played the last 10 minutes with 12.

“But we kept finding ways to stay in the game and it only got away from us at the end when we were down to 12.

“We’d spoken about dealing with Barrow’s physicality. On occasions they got over us, which they would do to any team, but our endeavour and attitude in defence was first class. I was really proud of the boys.”

He added: “You know what, we will do it (win games) in spite of the blokes in charge.

“We’ll work harder in training, we will run harder, we’ll tackle harder. We will have to be better because of the blokes in the middle.”