Karl Robinson admitted his side were fortunate not to have Adebola Oluwo’s winning goal ruled out for offside as Salford City beat Grimsby Town 2-1 in their play-off semi-final first leg.
Oluwo met a Luke Garbutt corner with a powerful downward header five minutes before the break as Salford turned the game on its head in a helter-skelter first period.
The towering centre-back’s crucial goal came after Salford had fallen behind inside the opening minute to a sublime side-footed volley from Grimsby left-back Reece Staunton.
Days after extending his contract at the club, Kallum Cesay jinked through the Grimsby defence to score after four minutes as the Ammies silenced a raucous Blundell Park crowd.
Robinson said that at the time he felt Haji Mnoga, who was standing offside inside the six-yard box, but judged not to be affecting play by referee Matt Corlett despite the protests from furious Grimsby players, was not “interfering with the goalkeeper at the time of contact.”
Having seen the goal back, Robinson admitted after the match that with the header travelling back across the goalkeeper into the bottom corner, “he interfered with the goalkeeper’s eye line.”
“If I were on the opposition bench, I think I’d be asking the question, he said. “Maybe we would have seen that disallowed in other games.”
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Robinson explained it was nice to benefit from a controversial decision after Salford were controversially denied a penalty on the final day of the regular season against Crawley Town.
He was furious that Swabey failed to award a spot-kick after Charlie Barker sent Ade Oluwo sprawling a week ago and said that decision was the difference between earning promotion that day and having to go through the play-offs.
“We should have been automatically promoted last week. We have been owed three or four goals this season,” he said, smiling in the Cleethorpes sunshine.
The 45-year-old said he was stunned by the wonderstrike that put his team behind inside the opening minute and praised the way his players bounced up off the canvas after the early gut punch.
“I nearly clapped it what a goal, he said. I thought that’s well gone over. I’ve seen Youngie (goalkeeper Matthew Young) stand still and the ball dropped under the crossbar. I thought what a finish.”
He continued: “But I think every one of my players stood up to the challenge from then on. This was a very difficult game; I’m not under any illusions about how hard it’s going to be on Friday. If we had been beaten by one goal, we would believe we were in this.
“We were speaking earlier about how these legs, you can twist them however you want, so you can have all these different analogies lined up for the media. At the end of the day, it’s two teams going into the second half with one team having a slight advantage.”
He added: “We are at home on Friday, we know the City of Salford is going to get right behind us. But I think as a collective today, that was one of our best performances of the season.”
Salford City will welcome Grimsby Town to the Peninsula Stadium on Friday night in control of the League Two play-off semi-final, with the winner heading to Wembley at the end of May.
