SPFL Tier 3, The Rock, 30/4/22,

Too little too late.

Except for when we played East Fife this was our only home win in the league this season – and it came in the last regular game. Add to that that we have had only had three clean sheets all season and you can see where the problems lie.

Our team featured nine changes from last week’s starters – no doubt the manager trying to preserve players for the more important play-off games coming up.

We started brightly enough though I thought Clyde looked less than interested and in ten minutes Kristoffer Syvertsen executed a lovely turn in the box and shot past their keeper.

Thereafter we more or less dominated the half and ought to have scored when Ross Maclean had a one-on-one but he lost his footing just as he shot. Anothe rlovely move saw Kris Syvertsen set up by Gregg Wylde but his shot was either blocked by a defender or tipped over the bar by the keeper; it was hard to see which on the stream.

Then with half-time looming we lost centre-back Adam Hutchinson to a shoulder injury. No sub came on. Of course they came up the park and scored – albeit at the second attempt. Being a man short may have cost us that. Carsy came on as sub for the kick-off. Typical.

So far so like the last home game against Peterhead.

The second half was pretty much nothing but Conner Duthie and Josh Oyinsan on for the half looke dlively at times. It was due to Josh we got the winner. He rolled his defender on the halfway line and passed to Duthie who mishit his pass but Gregg Wylde got enough power to beat the keeper.

In the last seconds Josh took a sore one from former Son Kevin Nicoll who was immediately red-carded. What a ridiculous challenge to perpetrate in the last knockings of the season. I hope Josh will be fit to take part in the play-offs.

So a win at last. But is it enough to instil confidence for Tuesday night?

For myself, the nerves are shredded already.

SPFL Tier 3, Shyberry Excelsior Stadium,* 16/4/22.

Another game at the Shyberry, another 3-2 defeat with them scoring the winner late.

Fate sealed then.

There is now no chance we can avoid ninth place and the relegation play-offs. Indeed we can’t avoid ninth as East Fife’s defeat means they cannot catch us.

So another miserable season grinds on.

We were apparently down 2-0 then George Stanger got us back into the game. A headed goal from a corner! Our signature method of scoring from last season sadly lacking in this.

Then a further lifeline as they went down to ten men, former Son Adam Frizzell sent off.

An own goal even gave us an equaliser.

But with two minutes left they scored the winner. That’s our season in a nutshell.

At least the next two games are free hits – though Cove Rangers (up next) need a win to clinch promotion.

Then the nail biting really starts with the semi-final away leg on May 3^rd or 4^th, and the home leg on May 7^th.

*Call it Penny Cars if you must.

SPFL Tier 3, New Bayview, 12/3/22.

From bad to worse.

A win would have put us above Peterhead and almost certainly doomed East Fife. As it is we are on a doom slide – 3 points out of our last 15 while they are on the opposite trajectory (8 out of the last 15.) Now they are only 3 points below us, and our next two games look daunting while theirs don’t.

We seem to continue to shoot ourselves in the foot. Losing a goal in the first few minutes (again) and having a man sent off (again) even if this one was only in stoppage time. Still, Carsy ought to have known better.

The home games we have left I’ll need to watch through my fingers.

SPFL Tier 3, The Rock, 19/2/22.

Oh dear.

I could say the pitch cost us this. It was in a dreadful state and the winning goal came as a direct result of it when the ball bobbled as loanee goalkeeper Kieran Wright was attempting a clearance from a back pass. The result was a sclaff onto which the Alloa player latched. Despite Kieran forcing him wide (and doing well to avoid conceding a penalty) he managed to score from a very narrow angle. With 7 minutes to go that was us more or less dead.

Alloa, though, were the better team all game, seeming to be able to surmount the conditions and actually pass the ball. They exploited our left a lot and that was where their opener came from.

We came into it towards the end of the first half and the equaliser, a great strike from Paul Paton, was deserved at the time.

I thought that we would keep forcing it in the second half but it was Alloa who started to dominate the game. Even so but for that sclaff it might have been us who stole it. We did pile on pressure near the end with a succession of corners but couldn’t get any efforts on target or through the thicket of defensive bodies.

This is beginning to look very like a relegation season. Incidents like the sclaff tend to happen to doomed teams. Ominously, East Fife have picked up since we beat them.

Peterhead away next Saturday is a must win. A draw will not be enough.

SPFL Tier 3, The Rock, 15/1/22.

What Ho, Jeeves!

A win! And a clean sheet!

Mind you. It was only East Fife.

The first half was odd. Both teams had chances – twice there was pinball in their penalty area and it seemed impossible we wouldn’t score; but we didn’t. It could have been 3-3 at half-time instead of 0-0. Sam Ramsbottom (in because our new loan keeper Kieran Wright injured himself in the warm-up, that’s how our season has gone) had a couple of good saves.

In the second half it was kind of the same except new striker Joshua Oyinsan put in a centre forward’s header from the six-yard line (I thought the keeper should have done better, as they say) from a great cross by our other official debutant Gregg Wylde, who actuallly played last week for us as a trialist. I had forgotten what a centre forward looked like! Oyinsan won headers and held the ball up, put himself about and got on the end of a cross; what’s not to like?

That goal, aesthetically pleasing as it was – there’s always something delightful about a headed goal from a cross – was surpassed by the second; a great hit by Gregg Wylde from thirty-five yards, hitting the post and rebounding back across the goal, crossing the line as it did so. What a belter! In those stakes probably only beaten by Lee Sharp’s at Livingston and Big Roy’s at Love Street on Christmas Day 1971.

Even so East Fife had two great chances themselves but both times failed to test Ramsbottom in our goal.

Still I’m not objecting to being eight points clear of automatic relegation and only two (realistically because of the goal difference difference) shy of the staying up spot at this stage of the season.

We’ll need to keep it up though.

A respite from league business next week with Dundee coming for a Scottish Cup visit.

But the next two league games are fiercesome. League leaders Cove at home and third-placed Montrose away.

SPFL Tier 3, The Rock, 1/1/22.

The same old story. We didn’t play badly but….

What with injuries and Covid we were down to bare bones with only four bodies on the bench and even though it was a makeshift defence we actually played quite well defensively, by and large restricting Airdrie to shots from outside the box. (Except for Sam Ramsbottom’s flap at a cross just before half-time when we were lucky to get a free-kick for it.) But it only takes one of those long-range shots to succeed. As it was, when Sam Ramsbottom got his hand to ex-Son Dylan Easton’s effort I thought he’d pushed it round the post – until somehow it still hit the back of the net. The game was effectively over then.

We huffed and puffed throughout but had only a couple of half-chances to show for it, with a Sam Muir shot cleared near the line the closest we came.

We’ll need to hope manager Stevie Farrell can conjure something out of the bag during the January transfer window. Otherwise it’s only East Fife’s even poorer performance than us that will save us from automatic relegation.

And I wouldn’t be too sanguine about our prospects in the relegation play-offs either.

SPFL Tier 3, Bayview, 30/10/21.

Normally you couldn’t keep me away from a Sons game at Bayview, but these are not normal times. I don’t want to be in relatively close contact with people even in the relatively outdoors setting of a football stadium and I was feeling a bit under the weather anyway.

PLus this was a game we really could have done with not losing.

Suspensions and injuries apparently forced the manager to go to a back three. That didn’t seem to work.

Next week’s game against Clyde really is a must not lose.

SPFL Tier 3, The Rock, 11/9/21.

Wow!

What a contrast to the last few seasons.

This was our biggest league win for ten years. (Curiously that one was also against East Fife, 6-0 at their place in our last promotion season.)

Mind you there wasn’t much sign of it in the early stages where both teams didn’t threaten much. But then we got a free-kick which was flighted in by Connor Duthie and headed towards goal by Ryan McGeever. It looked to be going wide but ex-Son Scott Gallacher in the Fife goal palmed it out straight to Ross MacLean who gleefully stuck it away.

For a spell towards the end of the half East Fife had a lot of possession but their best – their only – chance came from a free-kick. Sam Ramsbottam looked beaten but the ball crashed off the bar and out.

Just before half-time a Callum Wilson corner saw Gregor Buchanan get a free header yards out. 2-0.

Things meandered round for a bit second half but we put the game to bed when another Callum Wilson delivery was met by Buchanan again despite the attentions of the defence.

Two more goals from set-pieces gave the result a welcome gloss, Ryan McGeever was left all alone in the box to put away Kalvin Orsi’s knock-back from a long corner before Eoghan Stokes headed in from a beautiful delivery from fellow sub Joe McKee following a short corner to him.

If you can be churlish about a five-nil victory here comes the churl. We didn’t score from open play. Indeed we didn’t create a chance from open play except for Ross MacLean’s dribble and shot from a narrow angle which hit the post.

That’s curmudgeonly though. It was such a delight to watch a Sons second half performance with absolutely no trepidation.

They won’t all be like this though.

Falkirk away next week. I never thought we’d be heading there next Saturday above them in the table. (Even if it is only on goal difference.)

SPFL Tier 3, Links Park, 28/8/21.

This is turning into an interesting season.

I had mentally written this one off. An away game against the (previously unbeaten) league leaders at a ground we’ve not done well at in recent times?

But we went two up (one of them from Kalvin Orsi – maybe he is a centre forward after all) and eventually held out for the win despite a late penalty for them.

I can’t remember when we last beat the league leaders on their own patch.

At the minute there’s not much between the teams in mid table and those at the top and bottom.

There’s a fortnight to wait for the next game though. That ought to allow time for injured players to get back to fitness but today’s picks did well enough. It’s against East Fife though and they picked up their first three points today so will be confident.

SPFL Tier 3, The Rock, 8/4/21.

Well. Two goals.

Count them.

Two goals – and we had a penalty saved. Who’d have thought it?

In one game we have increased our goals tally in the league by 33.33%.

It helped that we scored early; a Ryan McGeever header from a Ross Forbes corner. Typical that my live-streaming feed froze momentarily and I didn’t see it, just heard the commentators go tonto. (I did wind back the feed after the game and saw how thumping a header it was.) McGeever had another close effort – with his foot! – a few minutes later which crashed off the bar and a second free header in the second half where he was way off with his direction.

Thereafter it was not quite like Groundhog Day. We did look to be more on the front foot than in recent games even if East Fife had more possession. They didn’t do a lot with it though – except for Scott Agnew’s delivery at corners which I knew would catch us out in the end, and did. Thankfully that came too late.

Our second goal was a neat through ball from Ross Forbes and a shimmy past the defender by Adam Frizell before he buried it emphatically.

I was still figuratively biting my nails. We’ve cocked up so many games since the restart.

Pity that Clyde also got a win.

On to Cove on Saturday now.