SFL Div 2, Glebe Park, 20/8/11

Amazing the difference a goal makes. I had been going to start this match report with the phrase football can be a cruel sport at times. Yet it can also be the total opposite. One kick of the ball and despair turns to delight.

At half time you could only see one team winning this. Fifteen minutes later only the other. In the end neither did. A switch-back of the emotions.

Witnessing the first half I was at a loss to see how we could have lost 5-1 at home last week. We totally dominated a team who were/are many people’s favourites for promotion. 2-0 was a fair reflection of the game. Scott Agnew neatly finished for the first from a Pat Walker flick on, Jamie Lyden headed the second after running through a static defence. Brechin barely threatened Jamie Ewings only really had one save to make but covered the goal well.

Two minutes into the second half it was pinball in our penalty area. That only ever has one result. The goal gave Brechin confidence. Then the iron law that ex-players come back to haunt us kicked in. Derek Carcary ran through with Alan Lithgow struggling to keep up. The original offence was way outside the box but Carcary finally fell inside it. So: penalty and red card. That ridiculous rule. How, exactly, was the goal scoring opportunity denied? McManus scored it after all. A substitution took off Prunty to allow Nugent as replacement centre half. In the subsequent settling in period an overstretched Dumbarton leg played the ball straight to a Brechin player who went on to score.

From then on Brechin seemed to think they’d won it. If they’d gone for a fourth they probably would have.

As it was, Dumbarton showed character, continued to try to play football, passing to feet and trying to play through Brechin, without ever making Nelson in the Brechin goal work. Until the last gasp equaliser, a beautifully flighted free kick by Scott Agnew.

Brechin’s Paul McManus appears to have the nickname “Shagger.” How very un-PC.

Jamie Ewings was impressive in goal – and not at fault for any of Brechin’s strikes. He dealt with pass backs confidently, made himself big when required, generally exuded competence and never once gave me kittens.

Dumbarton did not deserve to lose this game and throughout played some good stuff. There was more than enough here to suggest that early season gloom might be misplaced. We’l need to keep things tight just after half time, though. And keep eleven men on the pitch.

I’ve been a bit knackered this week. I started back at work, which is always a shock to the system. That tree I mentioned three years ago – I’ve been blogging for three years? – is looking a bit peaky; but perhaps it always does. Time for reading has fallen drastically.

But I’ve been busy on another count. The man in charge of the East Fife programme has asked me to write an article to appear in the issue for our game there next Saturday (27^th Aug) which got me irrationally excited.

I’ve splurged out 1203 words and I’ll need to cut it for publication. So that’s my weekend gone.

(Well I may go to Brechin today but the prospects aren’t good.)

SFL Div 2, The Rock, 23/4/11

We needed something from this. We won’t get anything from the game at Livingston next Saturday nor from Forfar who’ve also beaten us three times already this season.

It’s too close at the bottom. We’re relying now on Alloa losing twice (or only getting one more point) as Stenny play free-falling Brechin and then Peterhead in their last game. I think they might win both those.

A play-off against a team with a lot of wins behind them in the Third Division looms.

SFL Div 2, Glebe Park, 26/3/11

Whatever Alan Adamson said to the boys at half time it didn’t work. We started it as slowly as the first and lost an equally quick, if not quicker, goal. After that any semblance of defensive organisation disappeared and it was like the early season again.

We were pretty much abject throughout. Only Ryan McStay – who somehow nearly always seems to create space for himself – and Jon McShane get pass marks, the rest looked like they’d never played together.

Brechin were by far the better team and thoroughly deserved the win. But…

They are the most annoying bunch of shameless whingers I’ve ever seen. While the game was still in the balance every time a decision went against them two or three would be in the ref’s face moaning. Ryan McStay’s booking apart* Dumbarton’s players by and large accepted decisions – even the offside goal (well; it looked offside to me) – but maybe that’s why we lost.

*Ryan had gone in to protect Martin McNiff after Brechin’s neddish no 7 had raised his hands to Martin. The Brechin player should have been sent off – and therefore not on the pitch to score their second, which may have been the critical goal as we more or less fell apart then.

Our day was summed up when Andy Geggan wasted our best chance. He lofted the ball over an absolutely open goal.

A lot of Brechin’s goals came from crosses (get your act together Stephen Grindlay) the last two from pinball melées. When there’s pinball in our area there’s only ever one result.

Nevertheless we could (should?) have had three penalties, two for handball in the first half and a third for a blatant push in the last few seconds.

But we deserved nothing from this game.

It’s getting tight at the bottom again. Alan Adamson has a big job getting the boys up for a crucial game at Stenny on Tuesday night. I’m not at all confident.

SFL Div 2, Glebe Park, 1/3/11

Three (count them; three!) equalisers. When was the last time we did that? And against a top two team away.

I “watched” the game on the BBC website and teletext. Every time they scored I thought, “That’s it,” then cheered up considerably when we got back in it.

I think it’s the first time this season we have gone behind and not eventually lost the game. Progress.

But Stenny and E Fife both won so it’s tight again at the bottom. Alloa and Airdrie Utd might be in the mix too.

All to play for.

SFL Div 2, Station Park, 26/02/11

Ah well. Situation normal resumed. But if losing the first goal was a test I think we passed it.

Forfar are a big strong team. Ben Gordon and Jon McShane aside we are midgets in comparison.

They looked very good going forward in the first few minutes despite not carving us open the way East Fife did. When the goal came it looked a great strike. Stephen Grindlay had made a good save from an earlier effort but had knocked it back out, the guy just thumped it.

We barely registered until much later in the half then came into it. Jon McShane’s beautifully struck free-kick was finely placed but still should have been saved by the keeper who only turned it onto the post/bar and in. The ref looked as if he wasn’t sure it was a goal but eventually gave it. I briefly wondered if we had scored an equaliser in this season before yesterday then remembered we had – at Forfar, in the first game.

At half-time I thought we were lucky to be level.

Different story second half; we dominated and played some very good stuff. We had a fair few chances, Pat Walker desperately unlucky to have a curling shot go just wide, Mark Gilhaney electing to shoot first time twice when he had more time were the best of them.

We were pushing for the winner when Andy Geggan lost the ball three-quarters into their half and they broke upfield. Our cover had been sucked forward and the Forfar scorer had too much space available to him.

Alan Adamson withdrew two midfield players and threw on two more players in forward positions to go for it but the second equaliser wasn’t to be.

Had we won, and therefore equalled the 119 year old consecutive away wins record, I’d have felt obliged to go to Brechin on Tuesday night. As it is I’ll probably give it a miss.

It’s not over yet and those below us have games in hand, but we have enough in the team now to suggest we can beat the teams we have to, if not the ones pushing for the promotion play-offs.

Famous last words.

SFL Div 2, Excelsior Stadium, 01/02/11

Well. Away goals from open play are obviously like buses. You wait all season for one and then two arrive in the one game. According to Pie and Bovril it ought to have been more. Still that makes two monkeys off our backs now since it was our first away win.

It had to be two goals though. I quote from the club’s website. “However, with 11 minutes to go the Sons keeper made a rash challenge with his feet and Airdrie’s Ryan McCord sent him the wrong way with the resulting penalty.”

Pity he only got a yellow card. If he’d been sent off he couldn’t play at Alloa.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record… I watched the Brechin highlights on Sons TV and Grindlay came, and didn’t claim, the cross for their first, and failed to get down for their second.

There’s a possibility we could move off the bottom on Saturday (since East Fife aren’t playing.) As that possibility exists it will not, of course, happen. I refuse to be optimistic.

SFL Div 2, The Rock, 25/01/11

League goals for predictor:- 19.

Oh dear.

One step forward, two back.

And this against a team who hadn’t played in 66 days.

Who knows what might have happened if the game at Methil had been on. We could have been level on points with East Fife going into this one which would have helped confidence.

The thing is we have to score two goals to have any hope of winning a game because we always concede. (Grindlay, Devlin, Gordon, Nugent, Creaney, Gilhaney, Carcary, Geggan, Walker, Campbell, McNiff.)

I can’t see us taking anything from the Brechin game on Saturday either.

SFL Div 2, The Rock, 25/9/10

League goals for predictor:- 18.

What can you say?

All but two of the teams in the league played, only one win and one draw to show for it. Add in a humungous negative goal difference and the fact that we’re at the bottom of the division again.

We’re doomed.

So Cowdenbeath are in Division 1 and Arbroath have been relegated to Division 3.

I wouldn’t have favoured a Brechin-Cowden play-off final as Airdrie Utd had been having a good go at surviving in Div 1. Alloa perhaps suffered from losing their top place in the division so late (much as Cowden did last year.)

The Forfar-Arbroath match-up was predictable for their final and I wouldn’t have liked to choose between them.

Cowden get promoted again after not achieving it by their own efforts last time. It’s a funny old game. Maybe their experience in losing last year’s final helped.

Interesting times in Div 2 next season. Four new teams. Since the introduction of play-offs that hasn’t usually happened without demotions of teams having financial problems.

We will struggle.