Double Delight

Posted on Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

Looking back on our win at Meadowbank last Saturday, our players deserve great credit for keeping our title challenge on track. Against a tough opponent, on a testing pitch and knowing we would not play another league game for several weeks, the players rose to the immediate challenge and delivered 3 points (in doing so taking our points total to 40).

Just like the song says, there is always 3 versions of the ‘story of any game’ (and/or perhaps any story in life for that matter). i.e. how we felt the game went, how our opponent felt the game went and what actually happened.

From my perspective, we didn’t start well last Saturday…in the main this was because ‘The City’ started so well. During this opening spell Flocks made one great save 1:1 to keep the scores level. Our best spell in the game came before half time…in that 20/25 min spell we created and had several goal attempts, taking one to go in at half-time 1-0 up courtesy of a Mark Whatley strike. In the 2nd half, although the game was fairly even in open play, our goal never really came under threat. Defensively, I thought our side was excellent last Saturday in delivering our 9th clean sheet of the league campaign (our 14th of the season). Donal’s late goal made the final few moments more comfortable.

So far, our league campaign has been about putting ourselves in a position to compete…in a position to win. After only taking 6 points from our first 4 league games some others wrote our group off, however, the players have been superb in putting another 34 points on the board following our sticky start. Are we title favourites? I don’t think so, we need only look at last season and think of Old Trafford to see that points on the board don’t guarantee anything. On their day anyone in this league can beat anyone…our next league game is vs. Preston, a side on fire right now.

Lots of factors will influence individual games…I know Dorian would rather the spine of his Team had not played on Monday night before facing a huge game for EUAFC tonight. In the end everyone will play 22 games…by the time we play our next league game, the picture will be clearer. For now, we can ‘see the stands’, we have given ourselves a shot at the title. However, the most difficult final few fences lie ahead at the start of next month.

Finally, on Sunday past Zorro & I went along to Nitten to watch our Under 17s reach the Scottish Cup final. In doing so, our U17s made history…they set a new standard and benchmark for our Youth Teams. Hopefully some of the players on show last Sunday will grace the 1st team one day…just like a single game, lots of different factors will determine whether or not they do just that. Best of all for me however, was watching Les & Keith put player development and team values before ‘winning at all costs’…the win was the icing on the cake and a fitting reward for years of hard work and effort by everyone connected with the squad.


Next Fixture

                     
Date: 02/11/24
Opponent: Peterhead
Venue:Balmoor Stadium
Competition: SPFL 2
Kick off: 3.00pm

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