Midweek First Team News – Kick Off time and injury woes.

Posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Mike says -

“As I don’t work on a Wednesday and as it’s too cold for golf (for me anyway) I thought I’d give you a mid-week update on First Team matters. 

Last week I asked Jimmy Murray to contact John Greenhorn and tell him that over the winter period Spartans would like a kick off time of 2.00 for all games at the Academy. Nobody knows what’s going on when it’s 1.15 one week and 1.45 the next and as we have lights, some sort of consistency would help our players and everyone who comes to watch us.

Although the EOS website never changed we kicked off at 2.00 against City and we were assuming we’d do the same this weekend and against the Vale. That was until I received a call from Rab Paget this morning. As the Vale committee have a meal booked and an night out in Edinburgh planned after Saturday’s game they don’t want to hang around too much before the festivities start. Rab asked if we could put the kick off back to 2.30 and I agreed in principle. Craig confirmed it’s OK as far as the Academy is concerned and Jimmy is contacting Mr Greenhorn and the referee today.

Watch this space.

After such a convincing victory as last Saturday’s Sam and I would at least like to have the choice of playing the same eleven again. There’s little chance of that I’m afraid. We had so many injured at training last night that Mike actually used me in the functions set up as well as the game at the end.

For the record Danny, Deano and Stewart all came off injured on Saturday (Danny leaving us with ten men as we’d used all our subs) and none of them trained last night. Danny’s was still limping as he went in to receive treatment and must be deemed doubtful for the Vale. Stewart had already received treatment on his injury and had the night off. He’s been told Saturday might be a bit too soon to be playing again but we’ll have a better idea by Thursday. Deano has had a very tight hamstring for a number of weeks and it nearly went early on against City. He did well to last as long as he did and although he was down last night he didn’t strip and is another doubt for the weekend.

Dan took a dunt in the ribs against City and couldn’t train last night and Cloudie’s groin problem has resurfaced recently and as such has been given the week off from training. We’ll reassess Dan and Keith later in the week. Archie was also in the wars on Saturday and needed treatment on his back before training last night.

To round things off our two scoring substitutes from last Saturday are also in the wars. Jorge missed training with the flu (it gets cold over here Jorge) and Chris pulled up early last night with a groin strain he’s been carrying.  

I think I better take it easy on Thursday in case I have to sign a form and fill a jersey on Saturday (I remember a game against the Vale where I had to do that for my previous club!!!).  

Seriously, Sam and I hope most of those carrying knocks or strains improve greatly as the week goes on and we do have Donal back from suspension and Robbie and Gav desperate to get back in the team. Put it this way Sam and I won’t be thinking about a starting line-up until after training on Thursday at the earliest.”

Mike