{"id":668371,"date":"2026-05-13T14:32:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T14:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/668371\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T14:32:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T14:32:16","slug":"play-offs-fa-to-review-taylor-harwood-bellis-and-luke-ayling-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/668371\/","title":{"rendered":"Play-offs: FA to review Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Luke Ayling incident"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Football Association has said it will review referee Andrew Madley’s report of Southampton’s play-off semi-final second leg against Middlesbrough after an incident between Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Luke Ayling. <\/p>\n

Saints beat Boro 2-1 on aggregate<\/a>, reaching the Championship play-off final thanks to Shea Charles’ extra-time winner.<\/p>\n

Just before half-time the two defenders were seen having a verbal altercation before Madley was spoken to. <\/p>\n

Reports emerged at the break, external<\/a> that Harwood-Bellis was alleged to have made a discriminatory comment.<\/p>\n

The referee then spoke to managers Tonda Eckert and Kim Hellberg on the sideline before play continued moments later. <\/p>\n

Eckert reacted angrily while being briefed on the situation, and had to be restrained by the referee and fourth official as he engaged in another fiery exchange with Hellberg. <\/p>\n

“I don’t think this is my place to say,” Hellberg said to the media after the game.<\/p>\n

“On the pitch things happen and it’s not my role to explain in terms of that, it’s better that the people involved do that.<\/p>\n

“I think [Eckert’s aggression] was in the heat of the moment, and feelings and emotions which are things we love about football. <\/p>\n

“I don’t know exactly about that situation but Luke is of course devastated we have not gone through.”<\/p>\n

After the game Eckert was also yet to be fully briefed on the situation, but said the two players had spoken. <\/p>\n

“I don’t have an understanding of the situation yet,” Eckert said in his post-match media conference. <\/p>\n

“But I have seen that the two of them spoke straight after the game and there was obviously a lot of emotions, but they seemed fine – so I need to check with him [Harwood-Bellis] what happened exactly.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Football Association has said it will review referee Andrew Madley’s report of Southampton’s play-off semi-final second leg…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-668371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}