MANILA, Philippines - Foton has filed a letter of protest to Philippine Super Liga, seeking to investigate alleged officiating irregularities and biased calls by the two referees who worked its knockout semifinal duel against Petron in the PSL All-Filipino Conference last July 6.
The four-page letter was filed July 20 and signed by team owner Rommel Sytin but was only made public through a post at the Tornadoes’ official Facebook page Thursday morning along with an accompanying open letter and a 13-minute video clip.
“We felt that the officiating of the game has to improve as we felt that there were many (officiating) irregularities that were made on the game. This letter signifies our protest on how the mentioned game was officiated,” said Sytin.
“After reviewing the video of the game mentioned herein, we were constrained to conclude that the referees’ calls on our team’s violation were biased and the calls were made to distract our players for them to lose focus and stop the momentum of the team,” he added.
Sytin named the officials as first ref Jocelyn del Rosario and second ref Lumer Pajarillo.
The video Foton posted showed detailed points of the calls they felt affected the Tornadoes’ play.
“We would like to implore you to further investigate this protest to be able to find ways on how PSL can improve game officiating in the future conferences,” said Sytin.