Brechin City 0 Accies 0: Saturday, 25 November 2000

This game was an absolute farce and a waste of everyone's time, effort and money. The pitch, which had apparently survived a lunchtime inspection, was a quagmire and totally unsuitable for football. In fact, it cut up so badly that I suspect that the Brechin groundsman will have been in tears by the end of the game.

Accies had Bill Davidson returning after missing 10 games with a broken leg. Presumably because of the heavy pitch, Ally Dawson left his assistant Robert Prytz on the bench, with Davidson coming into his midfiled position. Gary Clark continued at the back and David McFarlane was on the bench. This of course meant that Alex Eadie was still in the team.

Alex Eadie would fit the classic description of an enigma (someone who had a good game once but we're all waiting for another one) if he'd had a good game in the first place. If he has, I don't remember it. He may have scored a lot of goals with Pollok Juniors but I think the joke's wearing a bit thin now. He doesn't have any pace, he can't beat people, doesn't appear to be able to shoot and is hopeless at timing his jumps. As Clive Anderson would say, "Is there no beginning to this man's talent?" He's been compared to Jim Liddle (a legend in Accies folklore for being a useless centre forward) but at least Liddle scored lots of goals in the lower leagues and his failure was at Premier League level. There's just no excuse for Dawson to persevere with this man. If we have aspirations to escape this league a proper centre forward must be signed now! Eadie did have a shooting chance late in the game, but he swung his leg and hit the ball with his knee. Thankfully he was hauled off soon afterwards. His replacement, David McFarlane, immediately caused problems for the Brechin defence but he didn't have enough time to do any real damage.

Just to add to the misery, Accies were wearing their green and blue hooped shirts (which I think they first wore at Glebe Park two years ago in a league cup tie.) I do like this strip, but in the gloom and the mud, it was very hard to see the players properly. The light was so bad from the beginning that I didn't even bother to try to take any pictures.

As far as the actual football was concerned, Accies tried quite hard but it was obvious that if any team was going to win this it would be the hosts. They did create a few chances and produced a couple of good saves from Ian Macfarlane and a goalline clearance from Keith Hogg. However, the Accies goal survived and Accies recorded their fourth consecutive draw.

I don't think you can read too much into this game. While it was our fourth consecutive draw, it also represents our tenth match since a defeat. Now that our immediate challengers are out of the way, a string of victories is absolutely necessary if we're to stay in touch with Cowdenbeath and Brechin at the top of the league. Quite how that will be achieved with our current squad I'm not sure.

So it was a bad day at the fitba' - the only saving grace was the fact that we didn't lose the game. But there was nothing positive to be taken from this performance and the only winners were the ones who decided to stay at home.

At least the stovies were good.

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

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