Lee Bullock refused to point the finger at Hereford’s Kenny Lunt for getting him sent off.

Bullock’s red card marred City’s first win in five games on Saturday. And his team-mates felt Lunt’s angry response from being fouled swayed referee Colin Webster to dish out a decisive second booking.

But Bullock took the blame on the chin – and insisted the dismissal was down to his own “stupidity” for getting an initial yellow card for handball.

The influential midfielder had used his arm to try to deflect a Steve Williams header past Hereford keeper Adam Bartlett Bullock said: “The hand ball was stupid of me. It was a spur of the moment thing but I knew what I was doing.

“But I didn’t expect to get sent off after the foul. I genuinely went for the ball and I thought the ref realised that.

“Then their lad started to have a moan about it. It wasn’t very nice but you can understand why he did it because they were one down. But I’m more annoyed with the first booking because that was a really stupid thing to do.”

Gareth Evans, whose goal earned City’s first league win in a month, believed Lunt had influenced the official.

He said: “Refs pick up on little things like that. Kenny showed he was frusutrated and that made it seem ten times worse than it was. I think it was a poor decision.”

Bullock misses next week’s trip to Macclesfield. But he would have been banned anyway after the original yellow card took him to five bookings for the season.

Stuart McCall admitted: “Colin Webster is one of my favourite referees because you can always communicate with him.

“It was a foul but not a yellow card. I spoke to him afterwards and we agreed to disagree.”