Plymouth accuse Leyton Orient captain Liam Kelly of shoving ball boy to floor during bad-tempered match

Plymouth Argyle have accused Leyton Orient captain Liam Kelly of shoving a ball boy to the floor during the London club’s 3-2 win on Tuesday night.

A bad-tempered match threatened to boil over when Kelly got involved in a tussle with the ball boy, who fell over after he was pushed, leading to angry exchanges between the two teams on the pitch.

Although there were calls by several Argyle players for Kelly to be punished, as tempers frayed at Home Park, the match officials did not take any action against the Orient skipper.

Plymouth, though, who surprisingly lost the game when Orient scored two late goals through Gavin Massey and Sandro Semedo, have reported the incident to the FA after studying video footage and have labelled Keely’s behaviour “utterly unacceptable.”

The south-west club, who are on course to secure automatic promotion to League One, were also annoyed by Orient’s wild celebration after they secured an unexpected boost to their hopes of avoiding relegation to the National League. It was Orient’s first win in 2017.

"During Tuesday night's match against Leyton Orient one of our ballboys was shoved to the ground by Orient captain Liam Kelly,” said Plymouth in a statement.

"We have reviewed videos of the incident and we regard any physical or oral [sic]assault against our ballboys, or any representative of Argyle, to be utterly unacceptable.

"We have reported the incident to the FA for them to take the appropriate action.

"We are glad to say that the ballboy, although shocked by the incident, is otherwise okay and we thank the Green Army, on his behalf, for their concerns."

Chelsea’s Eden Hazard was sent off for kicking a Swansea ballboy in the League Cup semi-final in January 2013, although the FA did not take any further disciplinary action against the Belgium international.