Blackburn's Hughes vents fury over West Ham winner

LONDON, Mar 18 (Reuters) Blackburn Rovers manager Mark Hughes unleashed a scathing attack on the match officials who gave West Ham United a controversial winning goal in his team's 2-1 Premier League home defeat.

The goal was claimed by Bobby Zamora, though the ball bounced out after hitting Argentine team mate Carlos Tevez on the line and both managers said it should not have stood.

Hughes said the game was changed ''by a referee's decisions and the intervention of an assistant referee who clearly wasn't up to the job.'' Complaining about a corner given instead of a goal kick, West Ham's equalising penalty and their winner, Hughes said the officiating was ''a comedy of errors'', adding that his forward David Bentley was wrongly dismissed at the end.

''It just really compounds a poor day for the officials and a poor day for Blackburn Rovers,'' he said.

As for the key decision, he added: ''The ball hasn't gone in -- it's been stopped going over the line by their own player who's obviously in an offside position anyway.

''So how the hell they can give the goal in that situation I've no idea. I feel the assistant referee had completely lost the plot at that stage.'' Hughes felt yesterday incident strengthened the case for goal-line technology, which moved a cautious step forward two weeks ago at a meeting of the law-making International FA Board.

''These are the key moments in games that you have to get right because they have a direct influence on how well or how poorly you do in seasons.

''We were going for Europe,'' said Hughes, whose club are 10th in the table. ''That may well be the end of it.'' West Ham manager Alan Curbishley, whose struggling side moved off the bottom of the table with their first away win of the season, said: ''Obviously, it hasn't gone over the line...but I'll take it because that's what football is about.

''People talk about technology, but lots of these decisions go either way and when you're down at the bottom you don't get too many of them.'' That view was shared by match-winner Zamora.

Told that his shot clearly appeared not to have crossed the line, he said: ''Too bad. It's three points now. We'll definitely take that.'' REUTERS PDS PM0431