The Sky Blues were reduced to 10 men after just 23 minutes at Shamrock Park when star striker Rutkowski was given his marching orders following an incident with Divin Isamala as the pair chased down a loose ball.

Despite their numerical disadvantage, Ballymena took the lead on the stroke of half-time through Chris McKee’s fine finish and looked set to seal maximum points before Mikey Hewitt struck with just four minutes to go for the hosts, who remain bottom of the table.

Kearney is now set to be without top scorer Rutkowski for Friday’s visit of table-toppers Linfield and the Ballymena chief was left disappointed by the call.

“Sometimes that can happen (an early sending off),” Kearney told the club’s media channel. “The frustration is where the red card comes out of.

"To us, we’re shouting while the ball is in the air because he has been held for two or three seconds.

"I spoke to Igor and that’s the only answer I need, he said as soon as the ball went over his head he went to shrug him off, but he doesn’t know where he is at, so how he could grab hair or anything? I don’t know.

"The speed of the decision, there’s no team work or interaction with anybody else, it’s a hard one to take.

"We answered every single thing we could in relation to that and on another day should be out of here with the three points.”

Prior to McKee’s opener, Ballymena were denied a strong penalty appeal when David Toure went down following a challenge from Matty Carson.

The Sky Blues finished the match with nine players after substitute James Hood picked up a second yellow card in injury time.

"If there was ever a day I think we deserved three points it was today because of what we faced and came up against, mentally and physically, it was a very tough 90 minutes,” he added. “I felt we answered every question threw in our direction.

"The frustrating part is coming close to getting the three points we deserved, it’s frustrating to concede so late because there’s a group of fellas in there who deserved the three points.

"It was smart play from Chris, he drives at a really good angle and it’s a top finish from him.

"Even from our bench, the contact is so clear, the speed Toure is going at, the angle he’s run in at, he’s got in behind enemy lines and he’s entitled to cut across the defender.

"You can see and hear the contact and those are the ones that are hard to stomach because that gives us an extra cushion...the big decisions you feel have gone against us.”