Royce rolled over in a narrow victory for Saints Football
Oban Saints 2 East Kilbride RR 1 SAFL Premier Division OBAN Saints closed to within one point of Scottish Amateur Football League Premier Division leaders St Joseph’s FP with a hard-fought win over East Kilbride Rolls Royce at Glencruitten last Saturday afternoon.
Despite failing to hit the heights of their last outing against Craigshill Thistle, Saints did enough to squeeze past the Rolly and keep themselves firmly in the title race.
Manager Alex Craik named the same squad that had propelled Saints into the sixth round of the Scottish Amateur Cup two weeks previously and, unsurprisingly, opted to stick with the same starting 11.
When the two sides met in the West of Scotland Amateur Cup in East Kilbride earlier in the season, Saints ran out comfortable winners by five goals to one.
This time, the Rolly were determined not to make things so easy for Saints and pressed hard in the middle of the park cutting off the supply line to the front three.
The home side took the lead in the 19th minute when Ross Maitland produced an excellent delivery from a corner which Saints right full back David McArthur met with a prodigious leap on the six-yard line to send a crashing header high into the net to give Saints the lead.
Saints doubled their advantage in the 24th minute when a good pass from McArthur found Craig MacEwan on the left edge of the Rolly box. MacEwan made an excellent turn to get past Scott Woods and deftly lifted the ball over the advancing Dean Trainor for his 12th goal of the season.
The Rolly pulled a goal back just after the half hour mark when Paul Walker delivered another good left foot cross picking out Austin Reid, who beat Marc MacCallum to bullet a near post header past Thomas McCulloch.
This setback rocked Saints who were unable to find their passing range failing to muster another effort on goal in the remaining 13 first half minutes.
The Oban side started the second half as they had the first by immediately taking the game to the visitors.
Donald Campbell and MacEwan linked up well in the 55th minute to carve out a shooting opportunity for Campbell. From 12 yards out on the left side of the box Campbell curled a right foot shot towards the far corner which slipped agonisingly wide of the post.
The Rolly were enjoying a decent spell of possession at this point forcing Saints to sit deep and hit on the counter attack which almost paid off when Dougal Graham made a rampaging run up the left only to show too much of the ball to Trainor, who made a good save at the feet of the Saints’ full back.
With 20 minutes remaining Saints received a massive slice of good fortune when Reid took advantage of a mix-up on the left of the Saints defence to bear down on goal. Reid rounded the stranded McCulloch, who resisted the temptation to bring down the Rolly striker. With the goal at his mercy Reid somehow managed to send his shot wide of the far post much to the relief of all in navy blue.
Two minutes later good pressing on the left forced Craig Duncan to conceded a throw in which MacEwan took quickly finding Campbell well placed inside the box. Once again Campbell took aim for the postage stamp corner but narrowly failed to find the target.
With 15 minutes remaining manager Craik made a triple substitution, replacing Willie Gemmell, Ross Maitland and Dean Smith with Dene Cassells, Scott Maitland and Allan Mackay.
The substitutions had the desired effect of reinvigorating Saints but still the killer goal wouldn’t come.
Saints’ top scorer Donald Campbell completed an unwelcome hat-trick of missed chances in the 80th minute when he again failed to find the postage stamp corner with a curling right foot shot.
Substitutes Mackay and Scott Maitland combined well on the Saints right with Mackay sending Maitland scurrying up the right and getting on the end of Maitland’s cut back to fire in a powerful shot from 16 yards, which was deflected behind for a corner kick. Maitland flighted in the corner kick which Cassells met but was unable to generate enough power on his header to test Trainor.
Referee John Scott, who had a good game, added three minutes for stoppages before bringing the match to an end with Saints securing a narrow victory to reach the halfway stage of their league campaign in second place.
Manager Craik, although happy to get the three points, was a disappointed in the performance of his team. He said: ‘ We lacked urgency at times and never got our passing game going. We gave the ball away a lot which is not like us. We have three big games coming up so we need to get back to doing what we do well.’
The first of the big games comes this Saturday when New Farm Loch from Kilmarnock are the visitors to the town in the fourth round of the West of Scotland Cup. The game will take place on the 3G all-weather community pitch with a 2pm kick- off. Referee in charge is Stephen Payne.