SPFL Tier 2, Starks Park, 28/1/17.

What an odd set of emotions this evoked. We won and I’m still raging at the referee.

We had the better of the first half, Robert Thomson and Sam Stanton had good efforts on target and I was beginning to think we might regret not scoring when on top. I didn’t expect to lose a blatantly illegal goal. Daniel Harvie was shoved over by the forward in the build-up – how the ref and stand-side assistant missed it is beyond belief – and the subsequent cross was converted. 1-0 down at half-time having played well with nothing to show for it I feared the worst.

Second half we started brightly and got the goal when Christian Nade headed in from a cross. Then the second decision under the Val McDermid stand that was criminal. Andy Stirling cut inside the fullback and looked to be scythed down in the box. even if there was no contact he was taking avoiding action from the lunge and that still makes it a penalty. No penalty. Andy Stirling got booked for “diving”. Why would he have dived? He wouldn’t have gone over in that position if not fouled. It definitely was not a dive. No-one dives at that angle. It was a pen and a sending off. That decision could have cost us. In many a game it would have. Today though Raith weren’t up to much.

Our second was a thing of beauty. A piece of intricate passing up the right seemed to have got us up a blind alley but the ball was suddenly switched over to the left and Daniel Harvie steamed onto the ball, took a few paces and lamped it into the far corner.

Six minutes later we made it three. A low corner looked to be a wasted one but it evaded everybody and reached Gregor Buchanan beyond the far post and his shot crashed in.

We saw out the rest of the game with not much trouble and Sons’ 87 fans making a noise fit for many more.

Those two decisions weren’t the only bad ones in the game but I can’t recall any iffy ones the ref made going in our favour including loads where he let things go which he should have pulled back for a foul for us. At one point he and the assistant stared at each other for seconds not knowing what to give. Eventually it went Raith’s way, of course. But those two in particular had been so appalling that even though we were winning somehow I still felt we weren’t and had been robbed. It is apparently not the first game this ref has given baffling decisions mostly against us. Let us name the guilty man. Mat Northcroft.

SPFL Tier 2, The Rock, 16/4/16.

It started well. It finished; well…..

Pity about the bit in between. And the injury to big Christian Nade is a blow as we’ve only looked a team this season after he joined us.

I watched this courtesy of BBC Alba of course and things were looking okay at half time. Tom Walsh had even hit a good cross!

What happened in the second half though? We totally fell out of it even before Nade’s injury. Jamie Ewings didn’t have much of a hope with any of the three goals; a poorish kick-out led to one of them but the defence should still not have let Raith through so easily. They seemed to just walk through for two of the three, the other coming from a not deep enough clearance by Fraser Wright.

Despite never having hit a decent cross before this game Tom Walsh ended this with two assists, and doesn’t Steven Saunders love a goal against Raith? Too little too late of course.

We really need something from Saturday now but a draw against St Mirren might not be good enough. We don’t want to be relying on Rangers and Raith even if Queen of the South do the needful.

I note that with Rangers and Hibs progressing to this year’s final East Fife’s record of being the only team outwith the top division to win the Scottish Cup has now been lost. And wouldn’t it be just the thing if Hibs finally win the thing again after totally horsing up the league? (Or Hibsing it as now seems to be the parlance.)

Mind you it’d be a laugh to see them navigating a European campaign from the second tier.

Then again maybe not.

SPFL Tier 2, The Rock, 12/4/16.

Football’s an odd game and this one was certainly an example. Hardly started when their keeper made an absolute hash of a kick-out, hitting it straight to Christian Nade who strode forward with the ball, shot while still well outside the penalty box and buried it.

A nice settler you’d think in such an important game but we promptly fell out of it allowing Queens too much space and time. But still Garry Fleming could have settled nerves further if he’d put away the chance that came to him but the keeper redeemed himself a little with a good save. Jamie Ewings performed the needful on a one-on-one but only delayed the inevitable. The atmosphere was strangely quiet, the crowd perhaps too nervous to make much noise – except when the stand-side linesman made a ludicrous decision to award a throw-in the wrong way after a ricochet.

Still, Queens’ pressure gradually built up then Ian Russell did what he has done against us ever since he left. Quite why he was given the space at the edge of the box to pick up a headed clearance is another thing entirely.

Then what should have been a body blow when they cut through us just before half-time to take the lead. I couldn’t see us getting anything from the game at that point.

But a few minutes into the second half the match had turned on its head. First Tom Walsh cut out a pass near their penalty area, beat the last defender and curled a beauty high past the keeper into the top corner. In our next foray upfield Christian Nade got his head to a Mark Docherty corner and scored. (It may have bounced off a defender’s back on the way in.)

That same stand-side linesman failed to make a decision at all after a Queens player had got a nick on a crossfield pass and a Queens player took it on himself to take the throw. The ref put his whistle to his lips as if to amend things but didn’t. What are these guys paid for?

It was all still a bit nervous with not much goalmouth action but with five minutes to go after another corner Greg Buchanan was attempting an overhead kick when he was bumped in mid-air and the ref gave the penalty. (It looked a bit six and half a dozen to me but I’ll take it.) Garry Fleming tucked the award away. 4-2. Breathless stuff.

That’s the first time this season we’ve scored more than three in a league game. Timely indeed.

SPFL Tier 2, The Rock, 12/3/16.

We wuz robbed!

This is the perennial cry of the frustrated Scottish football fan but I haven’t used it here before as far as I recall.

I wasn’t at the game but of course caught it via the medium of BBC Alba. Twice we had the ball in the net only to have the goal chalked off for offside. Both times the TV replay showed that nobody in a Dumbarton shirt capable of interfering with play was in an offside positon. In the case of the first not only was Christian Nade not beyond the last defender he wasn’t beyond the ball either.

Falkirk started more brightly and we had Jamie Ewings to thank for a magnificent one-handed save to keep us level early on. Falkirk continued to look threatening but didn’t really force another save. I thought we looked pretty comfortable for the rest of the half.

The second followed the same pattern until the penalty. Harsh? Maybe, what can you do with your hands when you’re falling over? I’d have shouted for it at the other end though. The sending-off may be the letter of the law but it was undoubtedly harsh.

It seemed to spur us on though. I thought after the second “offside” goal we were going to get nothing but the boys kept plugging away. No doubt about our penalty, Danny Rogers totally cleaned Nade out. He might have been sent off for it as well as his knees got Nade in the back.

I wasn’t confident of scoring it as it was Danny Rogers in goal and he had a good penalty saving record when he was with us last season but Garry Fleming did the business.

At kick-off I’d have taken the point but this result better not be the one that means we miss 8th place by a point or two…..

SPFL Tier2, The Rock, 8/3/16.

A welcome win and Christian Nade scored a hat-trick!

Had this game gone on last week I had thought of travelling through but of course it was postponed. Domestic circumtances this week precluded a trip to the west.

Slight fly in the ointment was Jon Routledge’s red card. But he was out for the Hibs game and didn’t get back in the team for Saturday’s debacle at Livingston.

Let’s hope the team that showed up against Hibs rather than the (same strating) side who misfired at Livi is the one that turns uo against Falkirk on Saturday tea-time. Yes, it’s a BBC Alba kick-off time.

SPFL Tier 2, Almondvale Stadium, 5/3/16.

Opportunity missed. Big time.

Livingston started nervously, seeming to be lacking in confidence. Apart from a brief foray or two we dominated the early exchanges. Several chances went abegging – mostly through Livingston losing the ball in dangerous areas but first Calum Waters delayed his cross too long, then Tom Walsh at least tested the keeper. A magnificent through ball from Waters to Christian Nade ought at least to have produced a shot but he checked back and the chance was lost. At least six Sons corners came and went without any rewal threat to Livi’s goal appearing.

It only takes a goal to boost confidence, though. Unfortunately it wasn’t us who got it. Tom Walsh lost the ball in our attacking third and we were too stretched. There were still chances to block the cross or the attackers but Frazer Wright seemed to slip in the box and despite Jamie Ewings blocking an almost point blank shot he could do nothing about the rebound. A few minutes later Jamie saved us when Gregor Buchanan tried to play football just outside our penalty area, lost the ball and their player was one-on-one. Jamie Lindsay was prominent in midfield first half but faded in the second.

Midway through the second half our 4-1-4-1 changed to 4-4-2 when Garry Fleming came on. Later still in a vain attempt to get something from the game it was 4-3-3 as Donald McCallum was added up front. Jamie Ewings made another good stop, this time from a long range effort. A Jamie Lindsay free kick more or less straight at the keeper was about all we had to show though.

The goal that killed it also ought to have been prevented. Frazer Wright failed to deal with the long ball and again lost his footing, leaving the player with an easy side foot in.

Late on sub Jordan Kirkpatrick beat his man in the box and was caught on the way past: a stonewaller but the ref didn’t give it. Not that it mattered by then as it would have been too late. Perhaps this was karma for all those games at Livi where we’ve gone behind and went on to win.

Christian Nade was fouled throughout the game but got little protection (or support from midfield come to that.) Tom Walsh has some good control and can drift past players but can’t cross; Donald McCallum is eager and quick but lacks strength as yet; he’s not really one to come on when we’re chasing something. The game could be our penance for having Frazer Wright in the side – not that the first goal was entirely down to him. Let’s hope all his mishaps were reserved for this one.

At season’s end this could turn out to have been a pivotal game. In which case it will have tipped against us.

Tuesday’s match against Alloa assumes great importance now.

SPFL Tier 2, The Rock, 27/2/16.

I wasn’t at the game – the good lady and I went to an antique fair in Edinburgh then roamed the charity bookshops in Stockbridge before entertaining ourselves with a meal out on the road home – I didn’t even look for the score till nearly midnight so sure was I that we’d get nothing from this.

I was astonished at the result. The best I’d hoped for from this was a 0-0.

Yet we had gone three up. Not so easy to hold on to against a full-time team pressing for promotion; as it proved.

Christian Nade opened his account for us, which is good, and I see Jamie Ewings got the call in goal.

With Livi playing Alloa we certainly needed something from the game. I’m delighted.

Our next two games are against the only two teams below us. It could be our season right there.

Scottish Cup Fifth Round, Dens Park, 23/2/16.

I kind of expected something like this. We don’t have a good record at Dens and midweek games are problematic for part-time teams against full-timers. Yet things could have been so different.

It was my first look at Christian Nade as a Son – and at Kler Heh too. Nade was the sort of forward we haven’t had in such a long time. He held the ball up and distributed it well. He’s not the quickest but his control is good. He’s the focus in attack we’ve been desperately needing. I doubt he’ll score many but he may allow time for others to get forward in support. Heh seemed a bit lightweight against this kind of opposition but he clearly has talent. He’ll need to savvy up about shielding the ball though and learn to avoid being shrugged off it.

We looked OK for 15 minutes and Dundee, while a cut above our usual opponents, weren’t really threatening, then ex-Son Paul McGinn wriggled clear in the box and beat Mark Brown at his near post and it might as well have been all over. It was after half an hour, though. Mark Brown waited to gather the ball, attacker Kane Hemmings didn’t. No way were we getting two goals back.

The third was a collective failure as Greg Stewart waltzed across the front of the defence before hitting his shot past Brown who seemed slow in getting down. (Do you sense a pattern here?)

The fourth was a joke. Mark Brown parried straight out a ball he could almost certainly have caught. It was returned into the net.

The fifth I knew was going in as soon as Jon Routledge made the professional foul. (He got booked for his trouble.) Mark Brown never even moved for the shot despite being nearly on top of it.

In my opinion Brown ought to have saved four out of the five goals. How different would the game have been if he had?

After the third we went to a back three and suddenly had space for going forward. With better crossing into the box we might have got something

Best thing of the night? A Dundee four on one break ended when their player ballooned the cross well over when totally unmarked. Highly amusing. There’s your Premier Division class right there.

Nade’s play gives me hope that we might be more menacing in future. Is that kind of sentiment fatal?

SPFL Tier 2, Stark’s Park, 9/8/14

I’m still puzzling as to how we lost this. In the first half Raith weren’t in it and we had three times as many shots on target as we had in the whole of last week’s game plus an Archie Campbell cross that just evaded Colin Nish’s outstretched leg.

Mind you the day had started badly when the team appeared in the new away kit for the first time.

Raith came out a bit quicker in the second half and Danny Rogers was forced into a save from Christian Nade but still the goal when it came was a bit of a shock – a poorly defended long throw. Raith took heart and raised their game and we fell out of it. The second was a free kick on the edge of the box. I was in great line to see the wall wasn’t lined up properly and Rogers’s positioning a bit suspect.* By the time of the third we’d just gone to three at the back to chase the game and so were left exposed.

Overall our play was too narrow, with not enough thrust nor cutting edge. I can’t see us getting much playing like this. Scott Agnew’s well struck goal wasn’t much of a consolation.

We don’t do league wins in early August, though.

But that new strip is honking.

*Edited to add. I’ve just seen the video footsge on Pie and Bovril and must admit I didn’t realise Scotty Linton was on the line for the free kick. It looks like that put off Rogers jumping for it.

SPFL Tier 2, Dens Park, 3/5/14.

Well, that was a strange experience. To see ten thousand opposition fans go from expectation to apprehension to joy then all the way over to fear was something.

It says a lot about our commitment that Dundee spent the last five or so minutes taking the ball to the corner flag.

We had the better of the game – without creating a clear-cut chance – until they scored. Once again our inability to deal with crosses cost us. Their scorer, Nade, was the best player on the park, though, I thought. Maybe Jamie Ewings could have made a better fist of the attempted save but the Dumbarton fans were way up the far end of the ground so it’s hard to tell. It was poor defending for their second too but Jamie had no chance with that one. A Colin Rhyming Slang flick had hit the post in between times but that was as good as it got first half.

Sons fans kept chanting out updates to the Hamilton score – among other gems like, “you only sing when you’re winning,” and, “we forgot that you were here.” A bit like the Aberdeen game.

Second half we pushed them really hard, got the penalty and scored it. There followed two more even better penalty claims after the first of which I said to Big Rab, “We’re never gonna get two today.” That just doesn’t happen to a wee club on a day like yesterday. Their keeper still had to make two great saves to gain them the points though. All this wa sup the far end so I wasn’t quite sure who had the efforts on goal.

Around this time the young Sons choir started singing, “We can smell the shite from here,” at the opposition fans’ discomfort.

There was no barrier at all to the pitch at the stand opposite us. We all knew there was no chance of the invasion not happening at the end. Two other home stands’ occupants also rushed on at the final whistle. For a moment I feared for our players’ safety but they all made it okay. Ian Murray made sure they didn’t run up the tunnel immediately but stayed to congratulate the fans (who reciprocated.) There were several hundred at least of us there yesterday, a good turn out for a nothing game for us.

It was weird to witness such outpourings of relief and joy and not feel a part of it. I’ve been at another side’s promotion winning game before when we were the away team (vs Raith in the 1980s, Dunfermline lost unexpectedly in their game the same day) and it was a very detached feeling then too.

So. We ended the season fifth, with a positive goal difference. I can’t believe it’s over so soon.