Accies 0, Airdrieonians 2 Saturday, 28 March 1998

Accies suffered yet another home defeat against Airdrie at Cliftonhill today. As expected, Allan Ferguson replaced Myles Hogarth after his suspension and Chris Hillcoat came into the defence in place of the injured Steven Thomson.

Airdrie started the game brightly and should have scored in the first couple of minutes, but Fergie made a good save. However, the goal was only delayed until the 6th minute when Wilson lobbed the advancing Fergie to score. The ball hit the inside of the post before being cleared by Chris Hillcoat. The referee, Jim Herald, allowed play to continue for about 10 seconds before he noticed that the linesman had sprinted to the half way line to award the goal.

The game then settled into a familiar pattern in which Accies had 80% of the possession without really looking like scoring and Airdrie were content to soak it up and hit us on the break. As with the game at Broadwood, Accies failed to exploit the extreme ropiness of John Martin and he hardly had to break sweat. The two best efforts were shots by Paul Ritchie and Steven Renicks but he dealt with those quite easily.

Unfortunately, the defeat was confirmed by a rare and calamitous error by Davie Craig after 72 minutes. He was dreadfully short with a headed passback and Brian McPhee scored easily. Despite lots more huffing and puffing, that was it. We had a couple of good chances near the end, but Gary Clark had an excellent header from a Steven Renicks corner cleared off the line and Steve McCormick and Paul Ritchie also missed good chances from headers.

As far as the performances are concerned, I can't think of anyone who was actually good , although Steve McCormick tried hard up front and several others were merely average. Paul McKenzie, as usual, was awful and was substituted after an hour.

The only other thing of interest was the continuing confrontation between the supporters and the board. Lots of puppets and placards were on display and the chief executive, Bill Sherry, ran down to the terracing at one stage to try to get the fans arrested for swearing at Jim Watson. The constabulary took no action and Sherry looked as if his blood pressure was going off the scale. The chairman, David Gebbie, was conspicuous by his absence.

Accies : Ferguson, Hillcoat, Renicks, McEntegart, McArthur, Craig, McCormick, McKenzie (Cunnington), Ritchie, McQuade and Clark.

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