A Son of the Rock

SPFL Tier 2, Glebe Park, 4/11/17.

So, a welcome return to the Glebe. Though the beech hedge has been given a terrible scalping.

This was a reminder of what lower league Scottish football is all about. Standing on the touchline two feet from the referee’s assistant, hearing all the verbals between the players. Pity about the standard of the football….

This was a bit of huff and puff, not much real quality on show. Not surprising really considering the import of the game. Plus we were missing about six players for various reasons.

We had much the best of the first half and made a few openings but nothing ever quite clear cut, Brechin always getting a body in the way. During a succesion of corners which all came to nothing I began to wonder if we’d suffer a sucker punch in the second half.

That looked more likely after the interval as we fell badly out of it and Brechin pressed. But they didn’t open us up either; only a long range effort put Scott Gallacher under any pressure but it cannoned off the top of the bar. This was the sort of game which our Dimitris could have made his own and the absence of Christian Nade shows how little we have in the way of aerial threat without him.

With a few minutes left the ball fell to Tom Walsh in Brechin’s box. Here’s the chance I thought. His shot too went over. That there was at least two points gone, it seemed.

That reckoned without Chris McLaughlin who got down the line one more time and whipped over his cross into that six yard danger area. It bounced off a Brechin player and towards the goal. It felt like it took ages before trundling into the back of the net. It’s the sort of goal a team concedes when nothing is going for it. Brechin must have been gutted.

Yet overall we deserved the win I would say, especially for our first half dominance. Special mention to Kyle Hutton, who gets a lot of stick from Sons fans but more or less ruled the midfield today. His long passing can be awry but when he keeps it short things are better.