In one of their biggest bans, Football Victoria have suspended Brunswick City coach Nick Kyriopoulos for 16 weeks following an altercation with a lineswoman.
Kyriopoulos was suspended after being sent off for confronting a lineswoman during Friday night’s 2-0 loss to Bulleen Lions. He received a red card for a R6 offence, using offensive, insulting, or abusive language and/or gestures.
Footage of the incident shows Kyriopoulos shouting “that’s your f–king problem, not mine,” at official Danielle Anderson shortly after City were denied a goal which would have levelled the match. It remains unclear what Anderson said to spark the response.
City players Peter Sprekos and Kobe Timms were both yellow carded before Kyriopoulos was sent off the field.
After Kyriopoulos’ outburst, the assistant referee can be heard shouting “get off the field right now” as well as “do not walk into my face like that.” Kyriopoulos responded, “you did that to me.”
Kyriopoulos addressed the red card in a post-match interview. “I don’t know why I received a red card, we weren’t given clear instructions or an explanation what happened,” he said.
“I’m assuming at some point this week we’ll have a conversation with the referees department or Football Victoria and they might explain it to us.
“We were a little bit confused, just like we were confused about the goal, the equaliser, we scored.
“We’ve got video they haven’t, so maybe they saw it differently, it looked clear to us it was a clear goal. That’s how it goes unfortunately.”
Kyriopoulos’ red card was the second of the match after Triantafilos Skapetis was earlier sent off for striking an opponent.
“He swung his arm to try and move away a couple of times and one connected with the player’s face, or close to the face, and he got the red card,” Kyriopoulos said post-match claiming “it probably looked worse in real time than it did on video.”
Source: Herald Sun
