PARK Avenue's joy at last weekend’s opening victory in the Vanarama National League North was tainted by a narrow home defeat against Southport just two days later.

Southport were relegated from the top tier of English non-league football last season and had brushed aside Boston United with a 4-0 victory before visiting Horsfall.

They made it back-to-back wins when Gary Roberts grabbed a penultimate-minute winner to beat Avenue’s ten men 2-1.

The first hour of the game had been even but the home side were up against it when right back Javan Vidal was shown a straight red card in the 62nd minute.

Park Avenue manager Mark Bower was not convinced it was a sending-off offence but thought there had been a worse foul committed by Roberts earlier in the game.

He said: “The sending off was definitely the turning point and it cost us at least a point, possibly three.

“I didn’t think it was a red card but it was one of those that you’ve seen reds given for so I can understand why the referee did what he did. We can’t complain too much about that decision.

“But we did have a complaint about an earlier challenge by one of their lads that was clearly a red-card offence. He went unpunished for that and it’s a bit annoying when he’s the one that pops up at the end to score the winning goal.

“If Jav’s was a sending off then the other definitely was. We’re back to that question of inconsistency from the officials. All the players, coaches and fans want is consistent refereeing.”

Bower has watched both incidents back and the club sought feedback from impartial sources.

“We asked some refs to have a look at it and we’ve shown it to people from other clubs and we’ve been told that it was as we thought,” said Bower as the club considered an appeal against Vidal’s red card.

“But we’re not going to lose any sleep over it. We’ve been hard done by and luck was not with us on the night. You just hope that it evens itself out over the course of the season.

“When you look at the two fixtures, both really tough ones, you would say ‘if we get a draw out each game’ then you’d be happy with that.

"But we’ve had a win, so from our first two games we’re one point better off than we could have been. Every cloud has a silver lining.”