Palace share spoils with Canaries

Crystal Palace and Norwich shared the points as Jamie Pollock and Darel Russell saw red at Selhurst Park.  

Mikael Forssell scored his 14th goal of the season to fire Palace in front on 34 minutes, but Craig Harrison's own goal levelled the visitors 10 minutes after the break to snatch a point.

But then 13 minutes from the end the two sides were involved in a touch-line brawl involving a dozen players and ended with Palace's midfielder Pollock and Norwich's midfielder Russell being singled out and given their marching orders.

The punch-up could land Palace in big trouble with the Football Association as the south London side have already been fined for earlier affrays against Nottingham Forest, which resulted in a £25,000 fine, and on Boxing Day against Gillingham.

The Canaries have also been hit by an FA rap for a mass brawl against Blackpool in the Worthington Cup.

A lacklustre opening first half-hour sprung to life when Pollock hit a long ball upfield to Dougie Freedman, who was located on the edge of the penalty area.

The Eagles' forward neatly rolled a square pass to Forssel, who made no mistake with a cracking low 15-yard shot which nestled firmly into the left hand corner of the goal. Otherwise, few chances were on offer where football suffered on an uneven pitch.

However Zema Abbey forced Alex Kolinko to make an excellent diving stop and Steen Nedergaarb saw a 20-yard free kick tipped over by the Latvian keeper.

After the break Freedman just failed to make contact with the goal at his mercy, following an Andrejs Rubins cross before the Canaries levelled on 55 minutes.

Palace were sloppy in a attempting to clear a couple of speculative stabs at goal and from the latter Russell squeezed in a low shot from 15 yards out which took a wicked deflection off Harrison before bouncing past the stranded Kolinko.

Freedman missed an easy chance midway through the half when he shot wide of an open goal, but otherwise there was little excitement apart from the brawl.