April 2004
Wednesday, April 7
10.30pm
Tonight’s result: Motherwell 1, Hearts 1.
After the two unfortunate losses to Dundee Utd and Rangers, we secured a point from tonight’s match against Hearts despite not playing nearly as well as we did in the previous two games. As someone once said, football is a funny old game.
We were dealt a major blow when Scott McDonald was ruled out through injury. As a result, David Clarkson was restored to his usual striking berth, with Derek Adams returning in midfield in place of Shaun Fagan.
The first half must go down as one of the worst Motherwell performances of the season, with Hearts dominating the entire 45 mins. In fact, we can count ourselves fortunate to have been only 1-0 down at the interval. The goal we conceded wouldn’t have looked out of place in a school playground – a simple cross resulted in our defenders getting in each other’s way before Gordon Marshall flapped hopelessly at the ball, and when it fell to the feet of Wyness he had a simple task to open the scoring. Completely devoid of any imagination or creativity, we reached half time without having registered a single shot on target.
The second half was slightly better, and although there wasn’t a great deal of wonderful play from Motherwell, at least we showed the commitment that was sadly lacking in the opening 45 mins. We managed to get ourselves back into the game on the hour mark when Clarkson, looking suspiciously offside it has to be said, headed home from close range to make it 1-1. This was probably our only real chance of the whole match, and although we battled well for the remainder of the game neither side really looked like grabbing a winner.
I suppose a point tonight isn’t the worst result in the world, especially considering the first half shocker, and coupled with Livingston’s draw with Kilmarnock it keeps us on course for a place in the top six. Perhaps the only players I would give pass marks to are Craigan and Burns, while disappointingly Gordon Marshall dropped yet another clanger – something that is in danger of becoming a weekly occurance.
Team (4-4-2): Marshall, Quinn, Craigan, Corrigan, Hammell, Dair, Adams, O’Donnell, Craig, Burns, Clarkson (Wright 87).
Subs not used: Corr, K McDonald, Fagan, Fitzpatrick.
Booked: none!
Crowd: 5,500.
The Under-21s lost 2-1 to 10 man Rangers Under-21s at Broadwood on Monday night, with Kevin McDonald scoring our goal from the penalty spot.
Team: Corr, Keogh, Fitzpatrick, Neville, Donnolly, MacDonald (M. Quinn), Wright (Coakley), Connelly, Scott, Barkey, Russell. Subs not used: Reid, Reilly, McColl.
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