If recent weeks have given us some great highs, Saturday’s 1-0 defeat away to Petershill in the Scottish Cup was a low and a reality check for us.
We went into the game with no fewer than 6 players unavailable,  Roddy Black (injured), Bob Urquhart (injured), John Roberts (injured), Mikey McIIravey (Injured) and both Sam and John Black missing due to work commitments meant numbers were limited, add to that, both Steven Cook and Scott Gray weren’t 100{7c374192a6b4ab3759a998c7ed91b6a23e4a55c5a2bdeefb0f495d9809378483} but had to play, so to say preparations and options for team selection were not idea is a bit of an understatement .
I felt, in the first half, we completely dominated the game and created several chances that we should have taken to have the game dead and buried, however we lost an extremely sloppy goal right on the stroke of half time, that ultimately cost us the tie. We let Chris Hall, the Petershill striker, get to the by line, failed to defend properly letting him into the box, at this point we had no fewer than 6 defenders in the box but again failed to react and he punished us by putting the ball in the far corner.
If the first half saw us dominate the game then second half could not have been a bigger contrast, Petershill were hungrier than us and put us under some real pressure limiting us to very few chances. The chances we did create, where few and far between and more disappointingly, when we did get into good positions, we failed to see the right pass, cross or shot.
Regardless of how light the squad was, we still had enough quality on the park to comfortably win the game and in all honesty I felt that a draw/replay would have been the correct result. The frustrating part for me was that this was a huge Scottish Cup game for us and we had too many boys way off the standard that we expect.
We will be looking to make amends this weekend when we have a huge game against Newtongrange Star on New Victoria Park.
