West Brom: Albion’s Jerome Thomas easy on ‘dive cheat’ error against Coventry

Oct 31 2009 by Andy Walker, Birmingham Mail

ALBION star Jerome Thomas has taken being labelled a dive cheat on the chin and accepted that mistakes happen.

Referee Keith Stroud was convinced that Thomas had attempted to con him into giving a penalty at the Ricoh Arena last Saturday and subsequently booked the Baggies winger.

The incident looked to have been a clear foul by Martin Cranie and Thomas insists that even the Coventry defender, his former Portsmouth team-mate, admitted that a penalty should have been awarded.

Thomas claims that it was not the first time that Albion have been denied a penalty, and it most probably won’t be the last.

However, you’ll find it difficult to entice Thomas into a spot of verbal referee bashing.

“It comes with the territory. It was a penalty and he (Cranie) even said to me after the game that he thought it was,” Thomas said.

“But that happens. Because I went down a little bit later than the ref thought I should have he may have thought it was actually a dive,’’ Thomas said.

“But when he made contact I tried to stay on my feet and couldn’t.

“We saw an example of that with Kevin Doyle from Wolves at the weekend (v Villa).

“He could have gone down but he stayed up and it’s a catch 22 situation, but it happened.”