Glens find shooting boots in second half
RUTHERGLEN GLENCAIRN .................. 5 FINNART .................................................. 0 Rutherglen Glencairn gaffer Willie Harvey has warned his side they can’t just raise their game for the big boys after they struggled to get going in their Strathclyde Demolition Cup win over Finnart.
The Glens were locked level at 0-0 at the end of the first half against the West of Scotland Division Four outfit.
But a half-time rally from the gaffer sparked the WoSFL top flight side into action with a five-goal scoring spree to book their place in the quarter-finals.
Harry Mitchell bagged a brilliant double, with Scott Schoneville and Marcus Fraser also on target amid an own goal from the visitors.
And Harvey said: “We made it hard for ourselves in the first half.
“We never really got out of first gear and we didn’t take the game to Finnart, who were really well organised and did really well.
“I was really disappointed in the first half and at half-time I told them it wasn’t good enough.
“I told them they weren’t showing the team they were playing enough respect.
“They came out thinking it was going to be easy so they started off at a really low tempo and causing themselves problems. We got into a rut and they had top get it out of their head that teams coming from lower divisions are lesser teams.
“You can’t just raise your game for your Auchinlecks and Polloks, you’ve got to have a good tempo against everybody.
“That was the message we got across to them and, to be fair, they did step up a couple of gears in the second half.”
Glens, who have not entered the prestigious Scottish Junior Cup, and Finnart were the only teams in action in the competition at the weekend with the remainder of fixtures in that round being played next month
Attention returns to league business on Saturday when Harvey’s side travel to Kilbirnie Ladeside, who have just appointed Thomas Molloy and Shaun Dillon as joint managers.
Both teams are in the bottom half of the table and will be keen to pick up points to climb the standings.
After 11 games in 36 days, Harvey is delighted to see the back of the Wednesday-Saturday fixtures that they’ve had to contend with as well.
He said: “It gives us a chance to rest some players this week and we gave them Monday night off from training because we are carrying a few injuries.
“Kilbirnie are a big team and they’ll bounce back from the start they’ve had.
“They’ve changed their manager and when that happens it can take one or two weeks for his ideas to come across and bring new players in.
“But it’s always dangerous facing a team who have brought a new manager in. They tend to go one way or another:
react very well or stick to where they are.
“We’ll just go about our game and not focus on Kilbirnie’s league position – because they are a big club.
“We’ve played seven from the top eight teams and we knew we had to come out of that with some points.
“But we’re disappointed to only take 11 because we played so well against
Pollok and Irvine Meadow.
“We feel we are about seven points light of what we should have got, which would have put us in a really strong position. The boys know that the teams around us are really important and we need to take points from these teams to make sure we pull away from the bottom end of the table.”