Hat-trick for Secuna as Southend beat Lamlash
Lamlash went into Monday night’s game with a few key player’s missing and Southend took full advantage with a superior performance.
The visitors took an early lead when Secuna Junior fired a low powerful shot into Heenan’s goal. Five minutes later Southend were awarded a penalty when full-back Chris Gosman was deemed to have handled the ball in the area.
Ryan Armstrong stepped up and made no mistake from 12 yards. Secuna added his second of the game after a good passing move from the MBS boys. Lewis Kennedy was given a yellow card just before halftime after he reacted angrily to a challenge from Todd Jameson.
Secuna was playing with confidence and it was well into the second half when he bagged his hat-trick after a cool finish. Tightrope
Kennedy was walking a tightrope and then he made another poor challenge giving referee, Archie McNicol, no choice but to give the striker his marching orders to reduce Southend to 10 men.
Despite being a man down Southend continued to dominate and Armstrong went on a mazy, solo run beating a handful of Lamlash players before sliding the ball into the net to get his second of the game.
Youngsters Gregor Crichton and Liam Bremner came on for Southend and they both struck shots one after the other with Heenan making a brilliant double save but on the third occasion Gregor’s shot was one step to far for David to prevent it going in the net. Fourteen-year-old Gregor scored his first competitive goal for Southend, which will surely be the first of many.
Archie gave the man of the match unsurprisingly to Secuna after his best performance this season with some great trickery and a hat-trick to boot. There was a lot at stake in this game with both teams battling to avoid the embarrassment of finishing last in the league.
Bionic man Neil Faulkner made a comeback for Shiskine and it wasn’t long until he had opened the scoring for the away team.
It was another man making a comeback, after being away for years, who got the reply as Bryan McCallum hit the back of the net with a fine strike. Faulkner then put the Kinloch boys back in front with his second of the match but again it didn’t last long as Peter Gilson scored from just outside the box in his first game of the season. Shiskine then upped the ante and Joel Small scored two goals in quick succession, the first being a wonder goal from inside the box.
Northend did score a consolation goal in the last minute when Lennon Deary slotted through Ben Innes to stroke the ball beyond Finlay Murchie in the Shiskine goal. Small’s goal’s put him up to being top Shiskine scorer this season edging by Cammy Thomson. However it was Thomson that was given the man of the match after another energetic performance upfront causing all kinds of problems for the Northend defence.
The result put the two teams on the same number of points where they are likely to remain unless one of them can pull off a shock victory against one of the other three teams in the league.
*In last week’s league table Lamlash were listed as having 19 points. This, as the rest of the table showed, should have been 12 points.
The fixtures for Monday July 31 will see Brodick vs Northend at 7pm and Lamlash vs Shiskine at 6.30pm.