My worst, most embarrasing 90 minutes as a Stenhousemuir supporter

It’s a long way to Castle Douglas and an even longer way home after watching our latest crop of imposters. I travelled down thinking that we would get a morale boosting victory and hopefully kick start the season but when I look back on things, I think the 5-0 defeat to The Shire was eclipsed by that result yesterday. Threave, were, and are, utterly hopeless. They play in a league where their match the previous week was called off because the opposition couldn’t field enough players. And our lot of arrogant wannabes obviously thought all they had to do was turn up and stroll in to the next round. This is the same group of players who have routinely this season embarrassed themselves and the club time after time with quite inept performances. Well this one took the biscuit. Okay, the keeper was badly at fault at the goal but at the end of the day it shouldn’t have mattered; it should only have been a consololation. So while it wasn’t necessarily his fault that we lost, it didn’t help. Come back John Hillcoat, all is forgiven. Threave were there to be ripped apart but we just didn’t have the wherewithal to break them down. We seemed to have two tactics. Get the ball to either of the 2 full backs to lob the ball into their keepers arms, or try and walk the ball through the packed defence. Option 2 can work if you try and pass the ball to one of your own players when you get to the edge of the box, rather than straight to one of the opposition defence, or if the players you are going to pass to actually move about and make it difficult for the defence to mark them. I don’t think we once managed to get the ball behind their defence for one of our forwards (sorry, our forward) to run on to. An absolute disgrace. And here’s a novel idea, after you’ve made a pass, why not make a run instead of standing watching the pass? Too many of the players were anonymous. Steve Hampshire came with a glowing reputation, but yesterday he simply looked like he couldn’t be arsed. I’m sure he is getting paid a decent wage. Are the club allowed to restrict payment for non-performance? John Dillon looks like he is petrified to take possession of the ball. No wonder, as no sooner does he have it than he is passing the ball straight to an opposition player. When you are playing a top class side who don’t give you time or space to make a pass, you can understand this, but it was Threave bloody Rovers. Captain Marvel – perhaps if he concentrated on playing football instead of disputing every decision or encouraging the referee to book the opposition players he might actually have a chance of living up to his reputation. Yesterday he was just embarrassing. Brian McLaughlin – at least he put a good shift in but when he is playing with a team of statues, it makes it difficult to do anything creative. I could go on and on, but it is just depressing. The players have had chance after chance to do something about this. Presumably Coughlin realises what he has walked in to. I am really worried about where this club is going. We seem to be timing our run to become the worst team in Scottish senior (ha, that’s a laugh) football just as talk of a pyramid structure takes off.