David Gray was furious with Jack Iredale after the defender's "needless" and "self-inflicted" red card ended Hibernian's hopes of a comeback in the Edinburgh derby against Hearts.
Iredale was booked for a strong challenge on Jordi Altena - before screaming in the Dutchman's face - just before the interval with Hibs 2-0 down. But after Adam Mayor had halved the deficit, Iredale killed his side's hopes with a calamitous second yellow.
Costly errors
The Australian misplaced a back pass to Raphael Sallinger and when the keeper scrambled the ball back to the defender, Iredale's poor touch led him to lunge in on Calvin Miller and catch the Hearts man on the head. Referee Don Robertson took no time to flash a second yellow, and Hearts scored a killer third four minutes later.
Gray fumed: "The first booking for a senior player to go and do that is needless. Needless and he knows that.
"I've not really watched the second one back but my recollection of it at the moment was take a quick throw in, we misplaced the pass by four or five yards, nearly scoring an own goal and then a poor touch once the ball gets flipped into an area again which could maybe just go into the stand and just make sure one mistake doesn't become two mistakes, never mind three mistakes become four mistakes and a second yellow.
"That's the thing, I think it's very self-inflicted at that point but it certainly took all the momentum out of the game for us which was definitely with us at that point."
Missed opportunity
Hibs were second best in the first 45 but came roaring back out the traps and were well on top after Mayor's goal before Iredale's second moment of madness. Gray knows it was an opportunity missed.
He said: "First half performance wasn't where it needed to be. Everything you want to do and how you want to start any game of football, never mind a derby, I don't think we've done well enough.
"Never won enough second balls, didn't compete enough in certain areas, lost really poor goals, avoidable goals, but still created chances in terms of a big chance to go 1-1, as poor as we were, knowing we can be so much better and then lose a really poor goal from a set piece.
"Give away a really soft free kick. I think it summed us up probably in the first half, where I thought we were second best, so deservedly going in behind at half time.
"Started the second half really well, got on the front foot, scored a good goal.
"At that point, I felt all the momentum was with us. You could feel that in the stadium. There was only one team, in my opinion, that was then going to go on and score the next goal, if another goal would come.
"I can't defend or really understand the multitude of errors that come for the self-inflicted red card at that point. It makes it extremely difficult for the 10 players that remain on the pitch.
Defensive concerns
"In fairness, when you look at that, we then conceded the third goal, and the third goal, whether you had eight men on the pitch, wasn't good enough defensively.
"Skips past three players really, really softly, really poor. In credit to the players that remained on the pitch, because it would have been really easy to chuck it at that point.
"Not chuck it, but lose the game, get away from you. You're down to 10 men, you feel sorry for yourself, you're 3-1 down against your rivals. But we were the team that kept pushing and kept trying and kept creating chances.
"We scored a goal that got chopped off, I need to see that again, I'm not too sure why. On top of that, we created four or five chances again that didn't take our chances. You've heard me say that in the last couple of weeks.
"If you look back at every game we've lost this season, certainly could have won every one of them if we'd taken our chances again."
