Cowie’s County comeback comes at the right time
DON COWIE’S eye for a killer pass helped Ross County spring a surprise against Aberdeen, but the experienced midfielder insists the importance of the win centres on Premiership survival.
The 37-year-old displayed the kind of nous currently absent from the Dons squad as his slide-rule pass for Billy Mckay to administer the coup de grace for the Staggies, as the striker grabbed his second goal two minutes from the end, was grist to the mill for the Highland club’s determination to remain in Scottish football’s top flight.
And, for the time being, that’s all the matters.
Yet, the 10-times capped Cowie doubted he would be able to return to first-team football during a near nine-month spell recovering from knee surgery. He only returned to action at the end of January.
“I doubted myself,” he admitted. “It was a long time to be out at my age. It wasn’t the fact that it was just an injury, it was that we didn’t really know what was going on.
“We persevered and it’s been great to be back involved in the last seven or eight games. I’m just loving it, loving being part of the team and I’ve got two managers [Steven Ferguson and Stuart Kettlewell] who have enormous belief in me.”
It was Ferguson and Kettlewell who made it clear during the interval that with their opponents down to 10 men courtesy of Dean Campbell’s second yellow card after little more than half an hour, Aberdeen were fatigued following their midweek excursion to Kilmarnock and a gruelling 120 minutes of Scottish Cup football. The co-managers pointed out that this was an opportunity not to be missed.
“We know where we are as a club and what we’re pitching against,” Cowie, inset, added. “Survival is the main thing. On the back of just being promoted last season, it’s just ‘Can you survive?’. And these three points give us a great chance going into the run-in.”
The hosts were perturbed, not just by Campbell’s red card, but that they failed to break down a stoic Staggies’ defence after Curtis Main had put them in front early.
Mckay’s equaliser just before the break offered his team hope and belief that victory was a reality, especially as the home side’s central-defensive pairing of Ash Taylor and Scott McKenna looked uncomfortable.
The defeat meant the Dons dropped behind Motherwell in the chase for third spot in the league table, although Niall McGinn, whose creativity is crucial to Derek McInnes’s outfit, dismissed suggestions that tiredness in his team had damaged them.
He said: “I don’t think it was a factor to be honest as I felt really good during the game and it was very windy with not much football played.
“But no disrespect, if we were playing against Celtic or Rangers, possession-based teams who maybe bombard your box with crosses or shots, it would have been different. “But I didn’t feel we had too many problems, although we made a couple of mistakes at the wrong times.
“They didn’t really cut us open, but they took a couple of half-chances and it just wasn’t meant to be our day today.”