Accies 0 Cowdenbeath 0: Saturday, 18 November 2000

Accies slipped down to third place in the league with this very poor performance against Craig Levein's Cowdenbeath on a dreich day at Firhill. With most of his first choice central defenders unavailable through injury, Ally Dawson persevered with Gary Clark in a sweeping role. Worse news was the fact that David McFarlane failed a fitness test on his back injury, allowing Alex Eadie another chance to prove himself at third division level.

Cowdenbeath had some old stagers in their team, with the Airdrie pair of Jimmy Boyle and John Martin in defence and Keith Wright up front.

Accies did start the game quite well. In the first half, they had good efforts from Paul Gaughan and Allan Russell which were well saved by John Martin in the visitor's goal. But they never really got into their stride and poor defending allowed Cowdenbeath to bring a couple of good saves out of Ian Macfarlane as well.

In the second half, the visitors clearly realised that Accies were there for the taking and generally controlled the game. Accies did scorn a couple of chances, with Mark Nelson volleying narrowly past from a good position and Allan Russell ballooning the ball over the bar from 12 yards out when he had time to control the ball and pick his spot. He was immediately hauled off by Dawson.

Cowdenbeath came close to taking a deserved victory near the end. First of all Keith Wright just missed the goal with a back post header and the another forward missed an open goal with a diving header after Ian Macfarlane had parried the ball into his path.

But the worst miss of all fell to veteran full back Jimmy Boyle with 13 minutes left. Ian Macfarlane jumped well to hold a cross under pressure from a couple of forwards. As he landed, they kind of got in his way and he was quite entitled to push them out of his way so that he could clear the ball upfield. What he was NOT entitled to do however, was to give one of the Cowdenbeath players a small kick as he sorted himself out. The referee, much to the displeasure of the Accies players and supporters, spotted the offence and quite correctly awarded a penalty kick to the visitors. Macfarlane was apopleptic with rage and talked himself into the referee's note book for his trouble. I think he was lucky not to be sent off - I've seen that happen.

Anyway, the ever reliable Boyle did Accies a huge favour by thumping his penalty against the underside of the bar with Macfarlane diving the wrong way. Accies took great heart from this but were unable to grab a goal for an undeserved victory.

So this was another poor showing from Accies against one of the other major contenders for promotion. The defence looked disjointed without the calming influence of Chris Hillcoat while the midfield were largely outplayed by the visitors. Stuart Callaghan had an uncharacteristically quiet game with only one decent cross all day. Allan Russell again gave the impression of a man who wanted to be somewhere else while the strikers, Michael Moore and Alex Eadie, just didn't put a foot right all day.

The team desperately needs someone who can provide a bit of width on the right and an experienced striker wouldn't go amiss either.

Next weeks game against Brechin will be another stern test for the team. They have to pull themselves out of this slump soon or their hopes of returning to the town in a higher league will not be realised.

Accies : Macfarlane, Nelson, Callaghan, Hogg, Gaughan, Clark, Russell (Martin), Prytz (Vaugh), Moore, Eadie, McFarlane and Bonnar.

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