| East Stirlingshire |
| Queen's Park |
| 0 |
| 0 |
| Despite their complete domination of play at Firs Park, a Queen's side glaringly lacking in spark or wit were unable to pierce the stout home defence during a horrendous 90 minutes. Time and again, Queen's pushed forward, but lacked the most basic ability to deliver the ball with conviction into the penalty area, and when the ball was occasionally moved behind the Shire defence, the attempts at finishing were unsure and weak. In what was a quite dreadful performance, hardly any player could have been pleased with their efforts, though Kettlewell got stuck in and the defence and goalkeeper were sound if almost completely untested. There have quite simply been too many of these performances during this season - Spartans, Montrose, Cowdenbeath- when the side's limitations were so crudely exposed, and they could yet cost Queen's a play-off place even though Arbroath also slipped up yesterday. Starting out on a bog of a surface, Queen's tactics were clearly directed more to a long ball game than normal, as the players realised that passing the ball slickly around on such a pitch was just not on. There were just two changes to the Queen's team from the game against Arbroath, with Harvey and Trouten in for Quinn and Murray, and no change to the referee, as the redoubtable Willie Hornby lined up yet again. He'd annoyed us too many times to mention before and yesterday saw yet another unmentionable performance from him. From the beginning, Queen's would have all the ball but Shire were quite prepared to dig in and made matters extremely tough going. After 8 minutes Kettlewell poked the ball wide from inside the area after Weatherston had hooked the ball in from the right. 6 minutes later, Ferry stole the ball from McKenzie and strode into the box on the left, smacking an effort into the side-netting. McKenzie himself had sidefooted a volley across the face of goal a minute before in one of Shire's only breaks forward of the first half. Around the half-hour mark, Queen's buffeted the Shire goal but shots from Trouten and Kettlewell were charged down as the home side's defending grew ever more resolute. But in the 41st minute, they should have had no hope, when Weatherston found himself available right in front of Jackson following a high ball. Volleying first time, his attempt somehow only came off the outside of the post and flew wide. It was the most blatant sign yet that this wouldn't be our day and in fact Queen's wouldn't come closer to a goal for the rest of day. As the half drew to a close, Trouten twice forced his way into the box, but on the latter of these occasions he fell theatrically to the deck as a defender approached. Hornby chose to book him, and a couple of decent opportunites were wasted. Queen's had returned to their failings of a few weeks ago, with a goal looking a world away and the away fans (who were probably in the majority) growing increasingly restless. Billy Stark would need to get the players charged up during the interval, but really nothing changed after the break; if anything, the performance was worse. Weatherston and Harvey both got into wide areas, but couldn't find Ferry and Weatherston himself with their crosses, and a Trouten drive from 18 yards was held by Jackson. In the 55th minute a dipping volley from a Shire player flew over, but really it was all Queen's, no matter how little they penetrated. In the 57th minute came the best chance since Weatherston's earlier sitter; Ferry shipped the ball across the middle of the Shire half to Paton, who cut inside a defender with purpose and slipped the ball through to Ross Clark who was making a dash into the box. Clark took control but struck the ball too quickly, and with little power, allowing Jackson to save though the veteran made hard work of it. If Queen's had been able to test this keeper often enough his goal would probably have fallen but their ineptness in attack, combined with Shire's superb protection of their keeper, prevented this from happening. Queen's continued to lumber forward but there was no great urgency to their play and very little to report in terms of opportunities. The support had been crying out for a substitution but it took Billy Stark until the 79th minute to make a change, though when he did there were two of them; the invisible Trouten and ineffectual Weatherston replaced by Felvus and Murray. Neither would even get near to goal during what remained of the game. One oddity of the game was that it took until the 84th minute for a corner-kick to be forced. Queen's got it, but they might as well not have bothered, so meek was the delivery. As Queen's pushed substitute Quinn (who came on for Harvey with 5 minutes to go) into attack and made a late push, Shire were able to finally break out and had one or two attacks of their own; a bending McKenzie shot in the 81st minute was perhaps the best they offered. It was still Queen's who came closest, and Clark's overhead volley was clutched by Jackson with a diving save with only two minutes to go. Then in the final minute, Ferry got round the back but his drive at the far post was heroically blocked at close range. Shire achieved two set-pieces late on, a corner kick which was cleared and then a free-kick right on the edge of the box after a good run by McKenzie. The great fear was that the former Albion Rovers player, recently on trial with Queen's, would return to bite us on the backside but the Queen's wall did their job with the free-kick. Willie Hornby then finally blew for time after an inordinate number of extra minutes had been played. Queen's may have failed to secure a whitewash of victories over Shire this season, but perversely, this most unsatisfactory draw allowed us to extend our lead to 5 points. Arbroath lost, but both Elgin and East Fife pulled closer with wins, and the last few weeks of the season are going to be nerve-ridden. The players just have to force us over the line now; they can do it without Kjartan Henry Finnbogason, but if he were to make an entry in the last few weeks this could have an immense impact on the team. It's up to the team we have at the moment to make sure that Tuesday night's game at Cliftonhill doesn't turn into another day of regret like Saturday undoubtedly was. East Stirlingshire: Derek Jackson, Paul Gaughan (Andy Brand 79), Trialist, Steven Blair, Jordan Smith, Paul Tyrrell, Gary Walsh, Ricky Patrick (Henry Sobolewski 59), Marc McKenzie, Derek Ure, Steven Dymock. Substitutes not used: Graham McWilliam, Molloy, Booked: Gaughan, Blair, Trialist. Queen's Park: David Crawford, Paul Paton, Mick Dunlop, Steven Reilly, Richard Sinclair, Ross Clark, Stuart Kettlewell, Alan Trouten (Tommy Murray 79), David Weatherston (Bryan Felvus 79), Paul Harvey (Tony Quinn 85), Mark Ferry. Substitutes not used: John Weir, Mark Cairns. Booked: Trouten, Murray. Referee: Willie Hornby. Attendance: 357. |