PHC coach Kyle Lightbourne moved to set the record straight over an incident towards the end of the first half of the Friendship final against North Village last weekend which nearly landed the former pro in hot water with the officials, writes Lawrence Trott.

Not one to lose his cool usually, Lightbourne was involved in an animated discussion with referee George O'Brien and one of his assistants, Alton Reid, moments after North Village scored through their captain Ralph Bean to take a 4-2 lead into the break.

"What happened was I was upset with my goalkeeper (Jay Smith) because I felt he should have dealt with the high ball coming into the box," explained the Zebras coach this week.

"It was a basic mistake from the goalkeeper's side of it, he knows he should have dealt with it and Ralph Bean should never have had the chance to score the goal. So I showed my frustration to my goalkeeper and kicked a water bottle which went near the linesman.

"The linesman turned around and said I threw the water bottle at him. He thought I was trying to say that 'Gumbo' was offside and I said to him that I was upset with my own goalkeeper. I said 'if you don't know how the water bottle got there, don't say I threw it at you'."

The exchange brought fourth official Anthony Francis into the heated situation as he tried to cool things down as he spoke to his two officials separately.

"The fourth official who saw the whole incident said 'no, he didn't throw the bottle at you, he was actually having a go at his goalkeeper'."

Lightbourne added: "I don't complain about the referees, people may think I complain about the referees. I may get upset with their decisions sometimes, blatant decisions where everybody in the stadium says how did he make that call? We know they get it wrong at times, everybody gets it wrong. It happens in the Premiership and all over the world.

"I just didn't like the fact that the linesman accused me of throwing the bottle at him and that's not what happened. I was wrong for kicking the bottle. But don't accuse me of throwing it when I didn't throw it."