A Son of the Rock

SFL Div 1, New Broomfield, 11/4/12.

So the league begins where it ended, at New Broomfield, and it turns out we didn’t need to win the play-off final at all.

But I didn’t expect the score-line to be exactly reversed.

Up until the goal we looked reasonably sound without really threatening much. After it, for the rest of the first half we were appalling.

The first goal looked offside to me but the attacker shouldn’t have had it so easy from a ball over the top. The second was equally dire defensively and the third was a joke. At 2-0 down you don’t dwell on the ball as a last defender, you hoof it. Quite what the reasoing was in playing Lithgow and Graham at centre back for the two previous games only to revert to Lithgow and McNiff for the first in the league I can’t fathom. All understanding seems to have gone. Stephen Grindlay had no chance with any of the four goals, though.

Second half, we dominated. The goal when it came was overdue and if they hadn’t cleared a header off the line which would have made it 3-2 we might have scraped a draw but the sucker punch was almost inevitable as we were chasing the game.

There’s a lot of sorting out to do. There’s still far too much lumping the ball up to Lister hoping he’ll control it and not enough playing through midfield. Our goal came from a passing move. Scott Agnew was again ineffective. We need to approach games as a 90 minute thing and show the endeavour we did in the second half here from the start.

A slow start’s not unusual for us. I doubt we can afford it in this league, though.

Edited to add:- We had our chances (Brian Prunty had a header over the bar, Scott Agnew screwed his shot over, there was the goal line clearance) but we didn’t take them. Airdrie Utd took theirs.