Ducking Hell

Another cup run comes to a limp close. After another uninspiring 90 minutes we were finally undone when Willie Lyle decided enough was enough - a trip into darkest Fife to Cowdenbeath is bad enough, but there was no way he was crossing that bridge more than is absolutely necessary - and therefore, a midweek replay against East Fife was out of the question. So, he ducked. Our priority is obviously the league, but it would have been nice to go on a wee cup run and maybe get one of the big diddy teams (as opposed to the a wee diddy team). Sure enough, East Fife got a match against the team managed by Diddyman Extraordinaire - Jimmy Calderwood, whose opening gambit on Sportscene after his team had struggled past Alloa was that the pitch was a "great leveller". So, on days when every grass pitch became a paddling pool, before it became a mud bath, Aberdeen played Alloa on the proverbial "bowling green" and Alloa pulled Aberdeen down to their level!!

Plastic Fantastic

As this afternoon's 'Homecoming' Scottish Cup ties began to take shape (am I the only supporter who actually likes the new name for the tournament?), my focus was, as ever, on events at Ochilview. Amongst the other ties, though, I found myself taking a particular interest in the clash between Alloa and Aberdeen at Recreation Park, and allowed myself a wry smile when the home side equalised just before the break. (I'm writing this at half-time: it's currently 0-0 between Stenny and East Fife, and 1-1 between Alloa and Aberdeen.) Why this enthusiasm for Alloa match, I hear you ask?

My interest stems entirely from the attitude shown by the Aberdeen boss, Jimmy Calderwood, towards Alloa's artificial playing surface. Earlier this week, he admitted he was considering resting several of his star players, since the risk of injury on the plastic surface was too great. I have always had the utmost respect for Jimmy Calderwood - he is a terrific coach - and to be fair to him, he retracted his comments after holding a training session on the surface. Nevertheless I was surprised he didn't make more of an attempt to get his facts right before speaking out in public. His scepticism about the playing surface presumably stems from Dunfermline's experiment with a plastic pitch - the only one in league football in the country at the time - whilst he was the manager there. Yet whilst there was widespread opposition to Dunfermline's surface - perhaps with good reason - it is well-known that those artificial pitches installed more recently, such as Alloa's and our own, are made to a higher-quality specification.

From my own perspective - and I'm sure most Warriors fans would agree with me here - the plastic pitch has been a great success. Our old grass surface used to cut up every winter; the new surface looks fantastic all year round, despite being used much more heavily. Hiring the pitch out to the Shire, not to mention making it available for private hire, provides a valuable source of revenue for the club - clearly this would not have been feasible with a grass surface. With regards to the quality of the surface, meanwhile, these 'new' artificial surfaces are FIFA Grade 2 approved, i.e. Champions League approved. That makes it seem all the more ridiculous when managers raise unfounded safety concerns, or, last summer, when the SPL forced newly-promoted Hamilton to replace their top-quality artificial surface with a (quite possibly lower quality) grass eqivalent.

As I come to the end of my article, we're now well into the second half, and unfortunately Alloa are trailing the Dons by two goals to one. More importantly, however, we are level at 0-0 with East Fife, and thus in with a fighting chance of reaching the fifth round. The BBC website's claim that ours was a featured match on 'Final Score,' on BBC1, appears to be nonsense, so I will stay tuned to Radio Scotland and keep my fingers crossed for the last few minutes...

Some things never change...

...or so the saying goes. 2008 was undoubtedly an eventful year for the Warriors, but as the New Year dawns, we find ourselves celebrating in time-honoured fashion: the obligatory handsome win against the Shire. Perhaps, though, it means even more than usual this year, for two reasons. For one thing, the day before the match, over a pint in a London pub, I discovered that one of my new work colleagues was a Shire fan - so the match was inevitably going to take on an added significance within our office.

The other major difference between this game and previous derbies, of course, was simply that few people were expecting a three goal margin of victory. The Shire have hit form for the first time since the Bronze Age, and are beginning to look like genuine promotion contenders. Their pre-match preparations were disrupted by the loss of their regular goalkeeper Jamie Barclay, but rumours of a 12-year old stand-in proved to be unfounded: Jim McInally had managed to recruit Barry John Corr, the entirely competent ex-Celtic and Stranraer keeper. So from a Warriors point of view, Saturday's result was nothing if not impressive.

Whilst it may not have been a classic, the players showed their quality and demonstrated their capacity to grind out a result. The first two goals were extremely well taken: Dalziel showed great predatory instincts after ex-Warrior Craig Tully worked his 'magic' in the Shire defence, whilst Motion's goal was something else. Surely he is the first player in history to perform two overhead kicks in such quick succession, including one after going to ground! Shirra also looks to be on top of his game going forward, whilst at the other end Bennett did all that was asked of him. All in all, then, an excellent afternoon's work, and all the more reason to look forward to next Saturday's clash with East Fife.

2008...

Looking back on 2008 it has been something of a mixed year. We started off the new year looking like we could put together a challenge for a play off spot, but two insipid performances against Arbroath and Dumbarton that resulted in one – nil defeats meant that it proved to be too little too late. Nevertheless, the one bright spot was the introduction of Robert Love to the first team and he has been a bright star, albeit one that has not had as many opportunities to shine as I certainly had hoped for this season. The new season has been quite unusual. For a period it looked like we were going to stroll to the title, without looking all that impressive if truth be told. In typical John Coughlin style, our defence looked, and continues to look, impenetrable. Up until the last two matches, we had managed to score in every league match which meant that more often than not we were guaranteed at least one point (i.e. the opposition would have to score twice to beat us) Now, we seem to have hit our bad patch that all teams do at least once during the season although the reality is that we haven’t played well for quite some time now but our big lead meant that we have managed to keep our noses in front going in to 2009. How do we turn it around? The back four of Lyle, Smith, Ovenstone and McGroarty seemed to be working a treat, but since Smith regained fitness it’s as if Coughlin is trying to fit Gary Thom anywhere into the team on the basis he doesn’t deserve to be dropped. I think he just needs to bite the bullet and give Gary a rest. No doubt there will be suspensions in the future which means Gary will get plenty opportunities in the future. As for suspensions; we have had too many. Particularly in midfield where key players (Motion and Ferguson) have been missing for periods of time. We need the stability back of a regular midfield quartet and therefore need to cut out the stupid bookings and sending offs. Up front, we need a new striker to play with Dalziel, or to play instead of him if the stories about his injury problems are to be believed. Without the support of Brand the goals have dried up for Dalziel and I feel that we need to have, effectively, a better alternative to Steve Hampshire. I think the next few weeks will be critical for us. We really need to start putting together some decent performances. Another long unbeaten run would potentially be all that is needed to win the title as there is no doubt that this is a very competitive league with almost anyone capable of getting a play off place.

London calling...

Some considerable time has passed since I last posted: having finished my studies and entered the real world, my time has been occupied by moving to London and starting a new job. As such, the distance of my 'commute' to Ochilview has lengthened once again, though I look forward to attempting it sometime early in the New Year.

Fortunately, however, whilst I have 'gone South,' our league form has done nothing of the sort. The defeat at Berwick was forgiveable, if only because there seems to be an unwritten rule that the supposedly rubbish teams always give us our most difficult games - Elgin in October, anyone? Last week's victory over Albion, of course, put us back on track - though having misread a thread on the Fans' Forum, I must confess to being a tad confused when I saw the teamsheets. I was under the impression that - rather than signing for Albion Rovers - Marc McCusker and Marco Andreoni had signed for us. At least they didn't inspire their new side to victory!

After our clash with the Shire, as ever, I was greatly amused by the highlights on ShireTV. Their commentator's latest wheeze seems to have taken the form of a vendetta against Craig McEwan. First he is accused of 'bodychecking' Shire striker Andy Rodgers, then we are told that the referee's failure to award a penalty against him was 'the moment that changed the game': why the commentator thought it was a penalty is anybody's guess. The incident which led to the sending-off of Shire's Paul Hay, meanwhile, is entirely obscured by a 'convenient' camera angle: one can only assume this was because his guilt would have been clear if his actions had been visible.

However, enough of my ranting: despite my occasional jibes at ShireTV's expense, I am always grateful for the opportunity to watch Warriors highlights online. There was a rumour that our recent match at Cowdenbeath was being filmed, possibly with a view to launching an online highlights service for Stenny supporters: we shall have to wait and see. In the meantime, I will look forward to tomorrow's clash with Forfar. The Loons have three ex-Warriors in their squad (Ally Brown, Graham Gibson and Kevin McLeish), two of whom played a part in our victory over East Fife precisely twelve months ago - arguably our finest result of last season. Here's hoping they don't come back to haunt us...

Fantastic Plastic

I read with a degree of disbelief in the Falkirk Herald that we are having trouble getting players in on loan because some clubs are reluctant to let their players come to us because we play on an artificial pitch. While George Peat and his fellow cronies within the game bang on about streamlining the administration and removing the self interest that is undoubtedly rife throughout the various administrative boards, what hope is there for the game when attitudes like this persist? In case these people hadn’t heard, the professional game in Scotland, like most other industries is well and truly goosed. Any sort of innovation which will help sustain the game in this country should be embraced and encouraged, but no, all you hear is how the “plastic pitches” (a misnomer if ever there was one) are not what football should be about – the ball doesn’t bounce properly, the pitch causes injuries, the home team gets an unfair advantage etc. Yet, almost every single club who has installed one of these artificial pitches swears by it. For us, I presume, our revenue must have increased dramatically since the pitch was installed, not just from the ground share with East Stirling, which I presume we would not have entered in to if we still had a grass pitch (who can forget the state the pitch was in the season we shared with Falkirk?), but from the various other activities that take place on the pitch through the week. So, while it won’t be the difference between us challenging Barcelona, Real Madrid, Man Utd etc as the biggest club in the world, it should help us make ends meet.

Tough at the top

After a tricky run of games at the start of the 2nd quarter it is very encouraging to see us having preserved our 5 point lead. Given that we still have to face the teams at the lower end of the league, to go into those games still at the top of the league is a huge boost, particularly given the injury and suspension problems we have had to deal with. For a variety of reasons I have only managed to get to the Dumbarton match out of the last 4. While this wasn’t necessarily a great match it was quite thrilling. Before the match I would probably have taken a point, but five minutes in, and down to 10 men I feared the worst. Of course I hadn’t reckoned on the headcase playing left back for Dumbarton who got Dumbarton back on level terms so to speak. As for the match itself, Dumbarton despite their good press (admittedly, written by their own fans!) were something of a disappointment. In Stevie Murray they have one of the best players in the league – certainly the most creative – but for me they didn’t threaten us enough and in the end it took an unfortunate deflection for them to grab a point. This was the first goal Scott Bennett had lost since coming in to the team. From what I have heard, and what I have seen, he is a huge improvement. The simple fact he comes off his line means that my heart is not in my mouth any time we face up to a set piece. Whether he is the long term answer remains to be seen (I see that David Hay at Cowdenbeath has lost his spot in the team…) Saturday will be interesting as ever. Could be the biggest attendance at one our local derbies for a long time. Thankfully for the credibility of the league The Shire are a different proposition this season and they are no longer the laughing stock of Scottish Football, a mantle it looks like Berwick are doing their best to collect. They (The Shire that is) have some decent players, but I don’t think any of them would get in to our team, so we really should be confident enough going in to the match. Hopefully some of the injury worries will have cleared up, although those players that have come in to the team have been performing exceptionally (Gary Thom in particular has been outstanding to the extent that I would pick him ahead of Jordan Smith now). Exciting times.