Love story
Ally ends Bully Wee wait for win over Jags
ALLY LOVE ended 11 years of derby misery for Clyde fans by putting Thistle to the sword at Broadwood.
And the Bully Wee goal hero believes their full-time rivals were lucky the winning margin wasn’t bigger.
Winger Love volleyed home from the left after 70 minutes to claim the victory Clyde thoroughly deserved on day one of the League One season.
Love said: “If we’d won by two or three I don’t think anybody could have had too many complaints – 1- 0 flattered Thistle and their keeper pulled off a number of good saves.
“I’ve scored a few important goals for the club over the years but I really enjoyed that one as it gave us our first victory over them for a long time. That one really was for our supporters and the players in the dressing room.
“We’ve all worked incredibly hard since lockdown and we got what we deserved.
“It’s brilliant to start a new league campaign with a victory but it’s all the sweeter that it was against our biggest rivals and the fact we hadn’t beaten them since 2009.”
Love’s strike – a sweet leftfoot volley from just inside the box – was fit to win any game and allowed the Bully Wee to bury an 11-year hoodoo.
It was the first win for Clyde over the Jags since a 1-0 victory at Firhill on March 7, 2009, courtesy of an own goal from the man who’s now in charge of the SFA, Ian Maxwell. And it undoubtedly sent the absent fans wild as they watched the action unfold on their laptops.
At full-time the musicsavvy stadium staff blasted Joy Division classic “Love Will Tear Us Apart” over the tannoy and never has a song so unsuited to a football match seemed so appropriate.
Thistle, whose striker Salim Kouider-Aissa passed up two gilt-edged chances before going off with what looked like a broken nose, should have given a better account of themselves than this.
In a truncated 27-game season it’s even more vital than usual to set down an early marker.
Jags will have to turn things around quickly if they are to reverse a painful decline from a top- half finish in the Premiership to the basement of League One in the space of just over three years.
The fact that on the day their best player was 23-year-old keeper Jamie Sneddon means that manager Ian McCall has plenty of work to do, something he is only too aware of.
McCall said: “We weren’t good enough on the day and Clyde were the better team.
“They fully deserved their victory and their centrebacks were very good. I was particularly disappointed with how we performed in the final third as we barely tested Clyde’s keeper, which is very frustrating.
“We’ll have Brian Graham back from suspension next week, which is a real boost for us up front.”