Management thoughts on our day in Gretna

Posted on Sunday, September 4th, 2011

Mike says –

“It was a strange journey back up the road on the bus yesterday as thoughts of our very satisfying result and performance had been clouded by watching the Scotland game in the Gretna Social Club. On the International, it’s unusual to see a home side in any grade of football on the receiving end of two such debatable decision at the end of such an important and tight match. 

Enough of Scotland and back to my thoughts on our game. The result makes you think it was one way traffic and we must have played out our skins – well it wasn’t and we didn’t, not for 90 minutes anyway.  Gretna should have scored first and throughout the game they passed the ball well and created problems for our defence. They are a young team with some outstanding players and will only get better over the coming seasons if this group of players is kept together.    

We were good and bad yesterday but thankfully not in equal measures. We had spells of really good play where we opened up Gretna’s defence and created a lot of chances. The fact we had 5 different scorers shows the goals are being spread around and at least 3 of them were great strikes after good moves. I can’t remember when we opened with 3 straight league wins so it’s very pleasing to have started our title defence so well. Sam and I know that the league is going to be much tighter this season and the good start we have had will be valuable in the coming months.

We were poor for the first 15 minutes after the break yesterday against 10 men and throughout the match the occasional slack pass could have cost us dear. Sam and I aren’t looking for football utopia but the players know their concentration levels can be a bit better whatever the score in a game is. Keith McLeod will hopefully be given the go-ahead from the surgeon to return to training this week and Kerr Dodds hopes to be available for next Saturday.  Despite the result at Hampden yesterday some of us have a smile on our football faces this morning.”

Mike