Norwich City scored in the dying minutes of a match that Derby could not "fix".

There have been games over the past two seasons where the match officials seemed to have made up their minds not to award a thing to Norwich.

One incident worthy of recall was towards the end of the game. A derby defender tackled a Norwich forward from behind and both linesman and referee ignored it. So henri Lansbury inflicted the same on a Derby player, for which the linesman flagged a foul as though his life depended on it.

Lansbury was booked for giving the linesman a piece of his mind for clear favouritism.

Home supporters almost always find fault with match officials, but referee Andy Haines ignored the crowd calling for the time wasting that Derby seem so regularly resorting to.

Haines stood face to face with Robbie Savage and took the longest amount of abuse from the pony-tailed poppinjay and did absolutely nothing. Such cowardly behaviour should surely earn Haines a rebuke from his governing body. But referees can be as bad as they like and get away with it.

It was looking grim by the time the clock read 90, but the fourth official, MD Stewart had more guts than his three compadres and held up the board with 5 minutes time to be added.

Nigel Clough tried to wind the clock down by making a late substitution, so Derby supporters, officials and players have nobody to blame for the sixth added minute but themselves.

And the winning goal coming in that minute was just desserts for the cheating, time-wasting East Midland side.

And Canaries supporters have never celebrated a winning goal with such vigour, and such finger pointing at the white-shirted culprits.

Photo: Action Images

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