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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Footballers attack match referee

by

Walter Alibey - Senior Sports Reporter
2134 days ago
20190920
Assistant Referee Kirt Charles, centre, is seen running away from his attackers at the end of the Defence Force vs Morvant Caledonia Division One match on Wednesday evening in the Ascension Invitational Football League played at the Larry Gomes Stadium in Malabar Arima.

Assistant Referee Kirt Charles, centre, is seen running away from his attackers at the end of the Defence Force vs Morvant Caledonia Division One match on Wednesday evening in the Ascension Invitational Football League played at the Larry Gomes Stadium in Malabar Arima.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way to de­ter­mine a pos­si­ble course of ac­tion, if any, to deal with play­ers of Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed in Wednes­day's top of the ta­ble clash in the As­cen­sion In­vi­ta­tion­al Foot­ball League with De­fence Force at Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar Ari­ma.

Video footage be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed showed as­sis­tant ref­er­ee Kirt Charles be­ing as­sault­ed by play­ers from the Mor­vant Cale­do­nia team while the match of­fi­cials were mak­ing their way off the pitch.

It is un­cer­tain what caused the al­ter­ca­tion, but it is un­der­stood that play­ers from the East­ern Stal­lions (Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed) were fu­ri­ous over the Army's win­ning goal from Jer­wyn Balt­haz­ar which ap­peared to have come from an off-side po­si­tion in the 90+5 min­utes of the match. Fol­low­ing the goal the play­ers and sup­port­ers protest­ed, nev­er­the­less, the game was com­plet­ed and the Mor­vant Cale­do­nia play­ers con­tin­ued their protest of the goal with match ref­er­ee Crys­tal Sobers and Charles.

But yes­ter­day Guardian Me­dia Sports was re­li­ably in­formed by play­ers from De­fence Force that ref­er­ee Sobers al­leged­ly re­act­ed to con­stant ver­bal chal­lenges from the Mor­vant Cale­do­nia play­ers.

Her ac­tion led to an im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion by the play­ers, which then trig­gered Charles to spring in­to ac­tion to de­fend his fel­low ref­er­ee.

Video footage showed Charles at the end of a bru­tal at­tack, as play­ers and of­fi­cials from the De­fence Force play­ers mak­ing at­tempts to quell the mat­ter.

When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia Sports on Thurs­day, Kyle Duprey who was the Match Com­mis­sion­er, was re­luc­tant to com­ment, say­ing the mat­ter was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by League of­fi­cials. He ex­plained, how­ev­er, the match was pro­fes­sion­al­ly done by some of the coun­try's top of­fi­cials (Crys­tal Sobers - match ref­er­ee; with as­sis­tants Kirt Charles and Ains­ley Rochard). He said Mor­vant Cale­do­nia play­ers ap­peared to have been en­raged with the last-minute goal, with such a hefty cash prize ($250,000) at stake.

Key of­fi­cial Richard Piper could not be reached for com­ment on Thurs­day. It is un­der­stood he had been en­gaged in meet­ings all day, try­ing to se­cure a le­gal opin­ion of how to treat with the mat­ter. Piper had al­so been at­tempt­ing to get the ac­counts of sev­er­al eye­wit­ness­es.

With the goal, the De­fence Force won the game 1-0 and re­turned to the top of the stand­ings with 25 points with one round of match­es to go. They lead Mor­vant Cale­do­nia Unit­ed by one point go­ing in­to their fi­nal game against Matu­ra Re Unit­ed on Sun­day.

Cale­do­nia will be up against FC San­ta Rosa's 'Big Can­nons', who were at the los­ing end of 7-0 drub­bing by Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers at La Hor­quet­ta.


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