It doesn not take much to get Steve Evans started on referees but he had every justification after Steve Rushton's hapless performance at the Abbey Stadium.

Rushton's decision to book ten players, including seven visitors, was bad enough but the fact it hardly merited a mention in the Crawley manager's post-match assessment spoke volumes.

Instead, Evans described the decision not to award his side a penalty near the end of this pulsating encounter “the worst I have seen in ten years.”

Lewis Killeen was about to pull the trigger 12 yards out when his legs were taken from him by defender Phil Bolland but the referee waved play on and ran back towards the halfway line pursued by a mob of furious Crawley players.

Evans confronted the referee again at the final whistle and had barely calmed down 20 minutes later.

He said: “It was the worst decision I have seen in ten years. It had been a fantastic game with us on top in the first half and them in the second but when seven or eight of their players come off at the end and tell me it’s a stonewall penalty then that tells you all you need to know about the decision.

“I have praised three or four referees this season but that referee doesn’t deserve any praise because he got a shocking decision wrong. It will be interesting to see whether the assessor agrees with us or just pats him on the back and says ‘go again on Tuesday night son.’ “Lewis Killeen is the best finisher at our club and he was scythed down. It’s not just a penalty, the player should have been sent off and it has prevented us from getting what would have been a big win.

“As the away manager I tell you how you gauge that decision, when it happened there was total silence in the ground.

“We had a massive result on Friday when we got our points deduction down from four to one but we didn’t get a fair one today. Then again we are Crawley. Do you think he would have given Cambridge the decision if it had been at our end? It would have been nailed on!”

Mr Rushton’s only possible defence, even though he was less than ten yards from the incident, was that he was unsighted but he certainly knew where his yellow card was.

A total of 46 free kicks suggests this was a bad-tempered tussle but it was nothing of the sort. Just two committed play-off rivals trying to win a game where the stakes were high.

Mr Rushton made a rod for his own back by booking four players in the first 15 minutes. After that it seemed that every time he blew his whistle his next move would be to reach for his back pocket.

There wasn’t an awful lot of quality which was hardly surprising given the stop-start nature of the contest but it was absorbing nonetheless and Reds were nine minutes away from their first away win since November 29.

Evans sprung a tactical surprise by playing Glenn Wilson, normally a rightback, as a defensive central midfielder.

It helped cut off the supply line to Cambridge’s main threat Scott Rendell and Robbie Matthews and Jon Shaw had already gone close when Shaw showed a striker’s instincts when goalkeeper Danny Potter failed to claim Sam Rents’ free-kick and flick the ball in off the far post for his fourth goal in a Crawley shirt. Reds fully deserved their half-time advantage but Cambridge boss Gary Brabin introduced widemen Courtney Pitt and Robbie Willmott at half-time and gradually the hosts built up a head of steam.

But Crawley defended superbly, especially in the centre where Santos Gaia had an almost faultless debut alongside Jake Wright. Almost faultless because it was his tug on Jai Reason 20 yards out which enabled Pitt to curl a superb equaliser into the bottom corner.

Cambridge sensed they could snatch all three points and after that big let-off in their own box they were twice denied by Rayner's reflexes in the six minutes of injury time.

Cambridge: Potter, Gleeson, Tonkin, Bolland, Hatswell; Reason, Carden, Beesley (sub: Pitt 45), McMahon (Willmott 45), Rendell, Holroyd. Unused subs: Challinor, Coulson, Crow.

Booked: Gleeson (foul), Bolland (foul).

Crawley: Rayner, Forrest (sub: Hurren 50), Rents, Gaia, Wright; Weatherstone, Wilson (Giles 87), Bulman, Chalmers; Shaw (Killeen 76), Matthews. Unused subs: Pinault, Gill.

Booked: Santos (foul), Weatherstone (foul), Forrest (foul), Bulman (foul), Matthews (foul), Wilson (foul), Shaw (foul), Hurren (foul).

Was it a penalty?