BOSSES at Tenbury United and Tenbury Town have urged the Herefordshire Football League to ‘pull their finger out’ – after each was forced to play Premier Division games without proper referees.

Officials failed to turn up for United’s 3-2 home defeat to Malvern Town Reserves as well as Town’s 5-2 victory at home to Holme Lacy.

United’s game was officiated by a Malvern representative while a Tenbury Town clubman took charge of their fixture – but both clubs insist the situation is not good enough.

Aaron Morris, United’s joint-manager, said he had heard that refs had also failed to turn up at other games in the division and added: “I think a few emails will be going out to the league.

“If it’s just a one-off game, you say ‘fair enough’ – but when it’s happening at four or five games in the same league, it’s a bit wrong.

“If they have a shortage of officials they need to prioritise the Premier games.

“One of Malvern’s lads refereed our game and he did a good job, although one of our lads was pulled back for their third goal.

“But those decisions can go either way – and to be honest he was better than the refs we have most weeks!”

Town manager Keiran Fish was similarly annoyed, despite seeing his side record their first win of the season, adding: “The league have got to pull their finger out a little bit. It’s disappointing.”

Herefordshire Football Association’s county league chairman Jim Lambert admitted the situation was far from ideal but insisted the organisation was doing its best to deal with a referee shortage.

Mr Lambert said: “We are, without doubt, very short on referees and we asked Worcestershire and South Shropshire if they had spare refs, to no avail.

“Last weekend there were county cup games, which take precedence over everything, and it was not easy with other FA competitions taking place too. In general, the higher division takes precedence.

“We have set up a taskforce to see if we can try to sort something out but it’s not an easy situation because we seem to be bereft of referees this season.

“We are doing our best and we have every intention of trying to solve the problem in the near future. We are meeting on Wednesday to see what we can do about it.”

United are still without a win after three games but were unlucky against Malvern – suffering a second 3-2 reverse on the trot.

“We deserved something, we were the better side,” added Morris. “They passed the ball around well but attacking-wise we created more.”

United trailed 2-0 and 3-1 but ended the game empty-handed despite a cool Mark Boucker finish and a Toby Gittens header.

Town, meanwhile, twice came from behind to register their first win this term thanks to an Ian Patterson brace and strikes from Al Bright, Adam Everall and Jack Farrar.

Fish added: “I was very pleased. It was probably one of our best performances as a team.”