Nottingham Forest's play-off boosting 1-0 win over Cardiff City was followed by a nasty clash between Cardiff's Callum Paterson and Leandro Bacuna, in which the latter appeared to gouge his team-mate's eye at the final whistle.
The pair had to be separated by their team-mates after clashing heads at full-time to top off a dismal evening for the home side.
Cardiff manager Neil Harris played down the incident as 'passion'.
He said: 'In the heat of the moment, I've got no problem with that. I've got no complaint at all about passion. They came into the dressing room cuddling.'
Cardiff boss Harris had to reflect on his first home defeat since taking charge on November 16. The result leaves his side 10th, six points off the place off places.
Once again a controversial decision by the referee cost his side a penalty at the end of the first-half and Harris said: 'When a referee gets it wrong he goes home and he is allr ight. For us that is two games in a row here that the referee's decisions have cost us.
'It was a big moment in the game on the stroke of half-time. Who knows what might have happened if we'd got the penalty and scored it?
'He (Matty Cash) got nowhere near the ball. The ball was the wrong side of the player making the attempt. He kicked Josh (Murphy) and he had no option other than to go over given the speed he was running at, so it's a penalty for me.
'They were a team we thought we could catch, but that's going to be difficult now with games running out.
'We have to keep pushing to get back in contention for the play-offs. We need to turn the draws into wins because games are running out.
'We've got another huge game at the weekend against Brentford and while there is an opportunity we have just got to keep pushing.'