A disallowed goal dominated Ian Allinson's thoughts after his St Albans City side were held to a no-score draw at home to Taunton Town in National League South.

Shaun Jeffers sent a free-kick flying into the bottom corner midway through the second half and had started the celebrations before realising the referee had ruled it out.

The reason was for encroachment from Chez Isaac to the Taunton wall. Rule 13.2 of the IFAB states "where three or more defending team players form a wall, all attacking team players must remain at least 1 metre from the wall until the ball is in play".

That left the City boss baffled.

Allinson said: "The referee said it was because someone ran across the wall but the ball didn’t go near the wall. The ball went round the wall.

"It’s a double punishment because Shaun's going through on goal there and he's gone to get a shot away and he's been fouled.

"But when he does get his shot away, he's penalised because somebody's run across the wall.

"If you run across the wall and it doesn’t affect the wall, then I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong.

"It doesn’t affect where the goalie’s standing and he hasn’t saved it.

"If you look at the reaction at their players at their bench they were comfortable the only person on the pitch who thought it should be disallowed was the ref."

The 0-0 stalemate was the third home league game without a goal this term and while Allinson was happy enough with City's performance levels, he did admit they let themselves down in the final third.

He said: "I can’t ask for much more from the players in terms of their contribution, the only thing I can ask is for that little bit of quality.

"I think the players put a great shift in, they worked extremely hard, we defended very well, much better than the end of last season.

"We just haven’t got the goals in us that we had last season."

And he used Zane Banton as an example of what he meant.

The boss said: "Zane has a great chance in the first half. The keeper's parried it out and he’s ballooned it over the bar.

"He’s had two shots in the second half and he hasn’t hit the target.

"That's a criticism and I have to criticise him because he hasn’t hit the target but overall his performance was very good."