A Son of the Rock

SPFL Tier 4, Meadowbank Stadium, 2/5/26.

Oh dear. What a way to end the season. We simply weren’t at the races.

Mind you that’s the way it’s been for much of the past ten months.

We made Edinburgh City – bottom of the table and who hadn’t even scored a goal for two months – look like Real Madrid.

If you were charitable you could say it was an illustration of the reason for the change to ten-team divisions in 1994. Before that there were many so-called ‘end of season’ games (ie dead rubbers) where neither side had much to play for towards the end of the season.

But I’m not in the mood to be charitable.

We were just awful. They waltzed through us at will. And Brett Long in goal, while he made a few saves, didn’t cover himelf in glory for two of the goals.

Mind you, the ref killed the game when he showed Kai Kirkpatrick a straight red for a late challenge at 1-0.  There was no malice in it, and no force. Any chance we might have had vanished at that point; especially when they scored their second a minute or so later. That’s two reds for Kai in successive games he’s played in. Maybe he’s got himself a reputation. Or maybe the ref just wanted to show himself off.

City have won ten games all season. Four of them were against us. That’s 40% of their wins. (To put it i perspective, we only won ten as well but we didn’t beat anyone four times.)

I’m not overly encouraged that manager Frank McKeown is the right man for the job. It was noticeable that most of the exhortation coming from our bench area (curiously audible in a way such shouts aren’t at the Rock) was tantamount to abuse. And he made some very odd substitutions yesterday; not for the first time.

He now needs to make good signings who are considerable upgrades on most of what we had here – and improve his tactical nous.

But I fear it could be another long, hard season.