Monday August 10th 2015
Well I think it’s fair to say the honeymoon period is certainly over!!
After a good pre season we went into our first game up at St Andrews full of confidence but also knowing that pre season counts for nothing and we would get a better picture of where we were at after Saturday’s game.
However preparations on the day for the game were thrown up in the air as our goalkeeper was held up at work and got stuck in traffic driving himself up to the game. The uncertainty right up until just before 2:30pm (kick off) when he arrived no doubt affected our start to the game. For a while it was looking like it could be Archie in the goals for us with Baldy at his brother’s wedding. A totally unprofessional situation which won’t happen again.
The game itself and credit to St Andrews for capitalising on our poor start and in all honesty we could easily have been 2-0 down after 20 minutes. The first goal we gave away was poor in the lead up to the free kick and the kick itself. After that we started to gradually get ourselves in to the game without playing particularly well and had plenty of pressure for the remainder of the half with free kicks, corners, blocked shots, a few more half chances and also some pretty wild efforts at goal. I thought Kieran had scored when he poked it past the keeper but it had gone behind the goals. We also had a penalty claim turned down for hand ball.
Second half we started better and St Andrews sat deep trying to hit us on the break. I felt we dominated the half, again without playing like we can, but the ball just wouldn’t drop for us in the box and that bit of luck you require sometimes just wasn’t there with St Andrews defending well. The best move we had in the match ended in Fraser’s strike being cleared off the line, while the keeper made a good save from a one on one with Archie, who had a diving header into the side netting with Deano hitting the side netting too. We had a good penalty claim turned down second half when Kieran went down in the box but it just wasn’t to be. The sending of for dissent was unacceptable and 30 seconds later we gave away another really poor goal. No excuses after the start we had we had enough possession, pressure and chances to win the game even though we didn’t play well but I also felt we didn’t work the keeper enough or hit the target with a lot of our efforts.
The players know we under performed and let down a big travelling support on Saturday. The good thing is we have derby game Wednesday to rectify that. Newtongrange are a very good side with quality players and Alan Miller has them well organised and we know that we will have to play a hell of a lot better than Saturday to get a result.
Originally posted on www.bonnyriggrosefc.co.uk
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