So it all starts over again.

Another round of Saturdays spent in anticipation/dread to be folowed by delight or despair depending on the result.

Sons kick off against Bonnyrigg Rose at New Dundas Park this afternoon. We drew with them only a couple of weeks ago in the League Cup and might have been playing them again in ten days if they hadn’t lost to Kilmarnock B in the Challenge Cup. As it is we’ve got a trip to Ayrshire (or wherever Kilmarnock B play their home games) now.

But this is the real stuff.

I can’t imagine we’ll start off winning seven games in a row again, though.

Just in case you (and I) had forgotten what a football ground looked like, these are pictures taken at Sons’ first game of last season, the League Cup tie at Galabank, home of Annan Athletic FC.

Ground as seen from road from town centre:-

Entrance:-

Annan Athletic Club Logo on Galabank’s gates:-

Galabank From North. Ground is in background beyond gates at the left of the picture:-

Pitch at Galabank, from northeast:-

From northwest corner looking south, showing pitch-side stand:-

Northwest corner:-

From southeast:-

From southwest corner:-

Looking north:-

South enclosure:-

Way back in the dim mists of time the world was a simpler place and football did not dominate the calendar. World Cup finals were 16 teams large and the European Championship only had four qualifiers until it expanded to eight teams in 1980.

In Scotland the football season started on the second Saturday in August and finished on the last Saturday in April.

I thought it was pushing it when the season began edging into July to accommodate the Challenge Cup and altered League Cup format.

Today though is the 16^th of July. The schools have barely broken up for the summer. Yet the Sons have a first game of the official season at Station Park, Forfar, in yet another alteration to the League Cup. It barely seemed the old season had ended when pre-season games began.

The squad manager Stevie Aitken has collected seems a little thin. The League Cup looks on paper to be not too daunting but I have no idea how we will fare against the three lower division sides in our group. (I expect to be beaten by Dundee.)

The league is a different matter. Already it looks tough. We’ll be relying on another full-time side to be rubbish (as Livingston were last season) to avoid the relegation play-offs and even then we’d have to finish above Ayr United, by no means a given.

How long we can continue to defy gravity I don’t know. This may be the season we don’t.

I see from the club website that Sons have been included in the north area for the purposes of the new format of the League Cup (or Betfred Cup as it is officially known.)

Given that one of the major reasons for change was to have ties between sides more or less local to each other this decision seems utterly bizarre.

It is however a consequence of Sons relative success in that we have been included in the second layer of seeds due to finishing 8^th in the second tier of the SPFL last season.

There is a possible nightmare scenario of trips to Dingwall or Inverness, Peterhead or Cove Rangers.

Our League Cup opponents on 2/8/14 are to be Brechin City at Glebe Park.

It used to be a regular occurrence but it now seems like ages since we played there – even if it’s only actually been two seasons.

Not long to wait!

So, Cowdenbeath at home.

Once again we don’t get an easy one. In cups – especially the Scottish – we have a tendency to draw teams above us. (I know Cowden are below us at the moment but they’re in the same Division. We could have hoped for a Div below at least – even if that’s a banana skin.)

At least it wasn’t Hamilton again. That’s another thing that seems to happen often; getting drawn against the same teams as before – more often in the League or Challenge Cups though.

And it’s at home. But our home form has stuttered recently.

We’ll be sick of the sight of Cowdenbaeth at season’s end.

Scottish League Cup,* Round 1, The Rock, 3/8/13

A win’s not to be sneezed at.

But…

We beat the same club 2-0 at the same stage last season and this season they’re a Division lower.

However, I thought this wee Rovers side was better than last year’s so make of that what you will.

This was played on a fiery pitch with a gusting wind in the first half so ball control appeared to be difficult.

Even so there were signs here of a new approach under Ian Murray, passing the ball even from the back. Here debutant Aaron Barry, on loan from Sheffield United, looked a good addition, composed on the ball and reading the game well. We did miss Jim Lister when the ball was played forward in the air though. It was my first sight of Scott Linton at left back and Mitch Megginson wide right. Both had solid games.

Rovers only had one legitimate effort on goal the whole game, ex-Son Scott Chaplain’s effort being parried on to the post by Jamie Ewings. Having said that, their keeper didn’t have all that much to do either, though he had a fine stop from a Chris Turner shot early on and a flap at a Mark Gilhaney shot in the second half. (Former Sons Mick Dunlop, Kevin Nicholl and Liam Cusack were also in Albion’s starting eleven.)

Scott Agnew misplaced a lot of passes but it was his exquisite ball inside the defender that led to the goal. Two of them got mixed up trying to combat Mark Gilhaney’s run and he nipped the ball. I thought he might hit it first time but this is Mark Gilhaney. He’d had an opportunity to do that earlier and tried to take on the full back and lost the ball. This time he seemed to take an age to round the keeper but he finished it off nicely.

We didn’t have to do too much after that and as a result let Rovers into the game a bit in the second half.

We need to be more clinical and carve out more chances. I doubt a First Division (sorry, I know there’s a new name for the Division, but it’s bollocks: I think I’ll go with Tier 2) side will be as accommodating to our midfield and defence as Albion were.

Falkirk next week will be a test of that.

*Scottish Communities League Cup, if you must.