Scottish Premier League - 21/08/99
Scottish Premier League - 21/08/99 Saints 1 Airdrie in Disguise 1 League Table Here
Team :
Main,McQ,Blaster,Weir,Dods,Dazza,Kane,Del,Keyring, Gerry,Nathan
Subs : Dolph,Thomas,Miguel,Danny,Pope
I'm not quite sure how to sum up this game. On the one hand we can look at Saints and say that they played some good football at times and should have had the game sewn up at half-time. On the other there is the fact that the quality of both the ref and the behaviour of the opposition make you wonder if the game in Scotland is worth paying to see any more.
St. Sandy stuck by the team that beat Killie last week with the only change seeing new signing Kevin "Messiah" Thomas taking over from the Legend on the bench.
The first half saw Saints stutter occasionally in defence (with Main looking shakier than ever) but for the most part it was the home side who were on the attack. Unfortunately for us the ref decided to favour the HIVBees with the various offsides and free kicks to keep shots on target at a minimum. Still Dassa had a header cleared off the line and Dods managed two half volleys from the edge of the box as Saints built up their tally of corner kicks. For the HIVBees Latapy always looked dangerous and seemed to get far too much room to move in midfield.
And then there was Dirk Lehmann. Uglier in person and with these stupid bloody band-aids on his aural protrusions, I can safely say hand on heart that I have never been so glad that Saints failed to sign a player. Lehmann is plain and simple a cheat. Diving, shirt pulling, nudges off the ball and a major feud with Cap'n Jim throughout the game showed the player to be a disgrace to the game.
But that was typical of a lot of the HIVBees as time and time again they got away with tackles from behind, body checks and in the case of Pat McGinlay, the fouls were committed on more than one occasion. Nathan and Gerry bore the brunt but Del took several nasty knocks as well. Suffice to say that the current HIVBees team show all the skill and fair play that symbolised their carrot-topped lap-dancing-club-visiting manager. And for that I hope they go down - they're nothing more than a green version of the early 90s Airdrie.
Anyway back to the game and Saints took the lead 10 minutes before half-time when a series of half-chances in the box were cleared a few times before the Ginger Bomber himself sent a low drive past Gotgirlspantson in the HIVBee goal. It's amazing what a goal in Europe can do to some players confidence.
Second-half saw Saints take the foot off the pedal and HIVBees began to put some pressure on us. Even when we did get the ball forward there seemed to be little or no eagerness to support the two front men with Del in particular looking unable to run and Keyring struggling on the left.
Just past the hour the game began to descend into farce. Ref Alan Freeland had been favouring the HIVBees on several occasions and when Latapy had a blatant dive (and I'm talking Henprick level here), the resulting free-kick was blasted into the Saints wall leaving Del flat out. Of course with the carrot-topped lap-dancers sense of sportsmanship Renwick continued to play for another minute before putting the ball out. Absolute bloody disgrace. It was about now that the ref started to lose control. Despite letting the HIVBees away with GBH in the first half he decided to book any Saints player that put a challenge in as Lowndes (deserved), Dasovic, Dods, Weir, Bollan and Kane all went into the book. Bollan was especially unlucky as his challenge was met with some severe retaliation by Lovell which merited a red for the HIVBee and almost led to a full-scale war in the middle of the pitch as Dirk the Thtriker started to wade in.
St. Sandy withdrew the injured Del and put Danny on obviously with half a mind on Thursday night. Not long after the HIVBees equalised when a corner was put into his own net by Keyring. Unfortunate on the youngster but Saints should have had the game wrapped up long before then.
Strangely enough, this was a sign for Saints to start to fight back (although when linesmen giving corners in your favour are overruled by a ref 50yds behind the play you have to wonder if it'll be worthwhile). A short header back from Dennis saw Gerry almost sneak a goal as he put a header in but Gotgirlspantson got a hand to it. Miguel (on for Nathan) and Thomas (on for Gerry) had some chances with the Portuguese unlucky to see his header go over with 5 minutes to go. Even then we didn't get any luck. A series of corners in the closing minutes and a Miguel penalty claim all came to nothing with Saints only cheer being a second yellow and red for HIVBee defender Jack for dissent.
Its hard to describe the feelings post-match. The Saints performance wasn't too bad but at the same time lacked the killer touch that put Killie to the sword last week. Having said that the HIVBees were a bunch of spoilers who had no intention of playing the game most of the time and were helped along by the worst refereeing performance since Shuggy Dallas in the Coca-Cola cup a couple of years ago. It was that bad.
MoM for me was Nathan Lowndes. He is on excellent form just now and it's hard to see how he'll lost a starting spot in the team in the near future. As for the HIVBees there a disgrace to the game and if I had my way they'd be kicked back to their Leith ghettos with no chance of return to the top league.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | Points |
| Rangers | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 14 | 3 | 12 |
| Celtic | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 11 | 3 | 9 |
| Dundee Utd | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 8 | 7 |
| Hibs | 4 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 8 | 7 | 6 |
| Motherwell | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 8 | 5 |
| Hearts | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 4 |
| Saints | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 4 |
| Kilmarnock | 4 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
| Dundee | 4 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 7 | 8 | 3 |
| Aberdeen | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 9 | 0 |
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