My son's take on the game:
http://www.ratetheref.co.nr/
See under General Discussion
Daggers vs Burton - Dave Phillips
"Non-league officials of the East Midlands can breathe a sigh of relief this week!
I used to rate Dave Phillips when we saw him on a couple of occasions back in the Conference but on today's display I couldn't say I do now (and I think I wrote something similar last year as well). Whether I'm used to the non-league game and standards are so different in the FL I don't know, but his foul detection seemed way off to me today.
When is the earliest you have seen a booking for an accumulation of fouls? Here we had one in the 3rd minute, for Burton's right back I think, which seemed rather harsh - Mr Phillips pointed to three places but I could only recall two fouls (including that just committed). In the 7th minute Zavon Hines charged into the area and went down under challenge and after a moment's though Mr Phillips gave a penalty. I wasn't convinced at the time, and I think a fellow Dagger on our forum sums it up best when he says 'there was contact but he pulled out an oscar-winning performance'. Burton unsurprisingly were not amused as Hines scored the penalty. Within two minutes more he was in the book in bizarre circumstances - a ball was played crossfield towards him but was too high and instead of letting it go out of play he jumped up with his arms raised to stop it. Why on earth that merits a yellow card I don't know - it was a needless thing to do but the LOTG says handball is only a YC offence to prevent an opponent gaining possession (they can't if the ball is sailing out of play!) or if you're attempting to score a goal. As far as I'm concerned, just blatantly wrong on Mr Phillips' part.
After three dodgy early decisions play settled down somewhat, with a caution to a Burton player for another foul on Hines, this time deserved as he was brought down in full flight. The Burton bench wanted a second YC for Hines when he fouled an advancing opponent - he may well have got one if he hadn't already seen a yellow, the cynic in me says - but Mr Phillips wisely chose to give him a warning instead.
The general point about foul detection was perhaps best exemplified by the free kick that led to our second goal - here one of our player's was advancing and took a gentle nudge in the side and didn't go to ground or appeal but Mr Phillips gave the free kick (which was swung into the box and headed in). The BBC reports a booking for a Burton player at the same time but I didn't notice this - one of their players had something to say and got a furious blast on the whistle and a lecture. On several occasions throughout my dad and I turned to each other and in unison said 'that wasn't a foul', and as you can gather from the above, a number of them favoured Dagenham.
Overall, unconvincing. I did wonder if I'm so used to the non-league game that tolerances are so different at FL level, as I said above, but there still seemed to me to be lots of decisions given today that were simply not fouls...at any level. "