Tane Mahuta the great Kauri Tree has fallen.
Jeremy Dix
Sir Gordon Lamont, showing the same ruthlessness as Sir Alex, dropped Scott Mackenzie from the match day squad v Thistle. Citing reasons of non attendance at training as one of the major reasons behind the axing Lamont was quoted as saying “if you turn like a tug boat and give the ball away repeatedly the least you can do is train”
Onto the game, unfettered by the lumbering giant at the back the Div 1 team lined up to face an experienced Thistle team at Waverly Park.
Sir Lamont went with a youthful lineup (excluding himself) that paid dividends right from the first whistle of fearless Scott Donaldson. The first goal game after a matter of minutes when Nic Popham received the ball at least 20 metres from goal, he managed to get his legs under control and launched an absolute speculator onto the cross bar. The ball cannoned back off the bar and onto the goal keepers head and into the net for a fortuitous own goal…1-0 old boys.
We kept the pressure up from the restart which resulted in the man child Will Dymond scoring yet again from 1 metre out. I believe this takes him to the top of the goal scorers with five goals, well done champ.
After this we continued to dominate for a period until the changes were rang and yours truly trotted on. This coincided with Thistle’s best period of the first half and they score a well deserved goal (after I failed to track back) with the remaining half being fairly even.
A few changes were made with Alex Wright being released from goal to join his twin up front. We again scored early on and I thought that we would push on and score a few, however our attackers had other ideas and decided to see how far they could kick the ball wide or high of the goal. (Tip to the punters, do not park your cars behind any goal when Turk or Big Ed are playing – I think they have shares in a panel beater).
Thistle defended well though and were physical but fair in their tackles, the half was far from one sided with the Old Boys stand in keeper having to make a couple of world class saves to keep Thistle at bay.
Player of the day was Nick Tuckey who I thought was outstanding, read the play well and his communication was excellent.
A lot of things to work on but I thought that we played good football at times but made the wrong decisions in front of goal.
