REPORT:-
For
the first time this season we were scheduled to compete in a cup tie, against
Skene in the Dickie Trophy. Unusually for us we did not have the full quota of
16 to choose from with a number of call offs due to varying reasons. Following
on the now familiar pattern of positional and personnel changes The side was
announced to reveal that Stuart Marlow was out of the starting eleven and Gary
Longmuir and Jason Keith came back in. We lined up with Andrews in goal, Sim,
Shaw, Robertson and Michie in defence, Keith, Longmuir, Morgan and N.Wood in the
middle and the Woods brothers up front. On the bench were N.Milne Marlow and
recent signing England. That trio were joined by holiday maker Andy Brechin. The
game got underway with Halli playing with the wind. Skene are top of our
division and to date are undefeated. They looked a useful side as they passed
the ball about well to carve out a couple of early half chances. It now appears
to becoming a bit of a regular occurrence for Halliburton to be slow to get into
matches and today seemed to be no different. We seemed intent to make things
difficult for ourselves by defending far too deeply. We were waiting for Skene
to play allowing them ample opportunity to set up attacks. G. Woods had our
first half chance in 15 mins. when he headed over following a corner then in 25
minutes we were forced into a change when midfield powerhouse Morgan for once
came off second best following a crunching challenge out wide. He could not
resume and Marlow went on at sweeper with Shaw filling the central midfield role
vacated by Morgan. N.Wood should have put us in front in 35 when he had a
completely free header from 6 yards which he put over the top. Skene went in
front in 38 mins. Alow ball across the face of the goal should have been cleared
by Marlow who instead left it for Andrews who was beaten by the in rushing
attacker.(H.T1-0) We started slowly once again and Andrews looked lively on a
couple of occasion's to thwart the visitors. We then began to take control and
created a number of decent chances, the most noticeable being one which G.Woods
and Longmuir managed to mess up between them. Longmuir however redeemed himself
in the dying moments of the match when with everyone, including Andrews up for a
corner, the midfielder threw himself forward to head us level (F.T1-1) Extra
time started and we in general looked to be tiring. We battled away however and
a pretty uneventful first period was played out. We turned round and in the 120th
minute of play a weary Robertson lost his man at a corner kick and the ball was
headed into our net. We now chased the game and dominated until the end. We laid
siege on the visitors goal as time ran out. Robertson had a couple of good
chances but couldn't get his headers on target, then G.Woods headed straight
into the keepers hands. Right on time we won yet another corner kick however the
ref blew for time before we could swing it across. ( F.T.A.E.T. 1-2). A well
contested cup tie which if it had been a league match would certainly have been
a good draw. Halli did well to battle for the 120 mins of football and it was
pleasing to see no heads went down at all. That said all the effort in the world
counts for nothing when you surrender the kind of goals we did this afternoon.
Both Marlow and Robertson were slack when the visitors scored, however as an
attacking force we created more than enough chances to win the match, these are
chances which we must start converting. After the match was completed it became
apparent that Skene had in fact fielded a trialist in their ranks, and of course
this is contravening the A.A.F.A Cup rules. A protest has been lodged with the
association and we will await the out come. With no one outstanding this
afternoon the Hallitopman award goes to Gary Longmuir for a typical tireless
performance and of course his timely goal which forced us into overtime.