Clydebank 2
Ashfield 4
Friendly (Violet Marshall Memorial Cup)

Match Report

It’s only pre-season. It only matters when the real stuff starts. That’s what you have got to tell yourself. Because, if you take the dismal showing we saw today as any indication of our future prospects then we would be as well throwing in the towel now.

I doubt we have seen as poor a display in Gordon Moffat’s reign than we did against Ashfield in this mini tournament. Lower league Ashfield scored three wonderful goals and a penalty kick to defeat the Bankies by four goals to two. There were so many issues all over the pitch in this game that it is probably best just to take breath and hope we can pull ourselves together.

It is hard to pull any positives from this wreckage, but if I had to pick one it would be that we, at last, showed some urgency and intensity in the last twenty minutes that I don’t think we have seen in any of the pre-season matches so far.

The alarming pedestrian nature of our play in possession was evident again today. We have a lot of the ball, but we are passing it to death in front of the opposition defence. At some point, there has to be a positive movement. Time and time again, the Ashfield defence were allowed to reset and get men behind the ball.

The ball has to be moved quickly and early to take the defence out of its comfort zone. Ashfield showed how to do it with a sweeping move for their third goal. One searching pass down the right wing, an early cross into the box before our defence could get close to their marks, and admittedly not a lot you could do about the finish as it was a fantastic first time volley that beat Ross all ends up.

It was only after the introduction of Nicky Little and Chris Black that we exerted any pressure on the Ashfield defence, however you do have to take into account that Ashfield were 3-1 up at this point and were inviting the Bankies on to them.

We did manage to pull one back through Chris Black to make it 3-2 and had some other chances to equalise but it would have been criminal had we snatched the result away from Ashfield.

In the end up, Ashfield managed a fourth from the penalty spot in stoppage time after an appalling mix up between Frazer Johnstone and keeper Lucas Ross allowed an Ashfield forward to nip in between the two of them. I’m not sure who brought him down, but by that point it didn’t really matter.

Even when we took the lead after fifteen minutes, it was hardly after a spell of sustained pressure. Up to that point we had just one other shot at goal – a smart attempted lob from McGonigle which had keeper Lochhead backtracking to save.

It was McGonigle who scored his third goal in as many games when he prodded the ball into the corner of the net after Graham had put the ball directly in front of him with a cute back heel.

It didn’t take long for Ashfield to equalise and it was a beauty from Bobby Barr. He picked up a half-cleared header on the edge of the box on the right hand side. He moved the ball on to his left foot and from the moment the ball left his foot it had goal written all over it. Lucas couldn’t even move such was the accuracy of the shot.

Ashfield should have scored again when a slack Johnstone pass was intercepted and it was immediately threaded through to Warnock who was only just foiled by Ross who was sharp off his line to block.

With three minutes to the interval, Barr repeated the trick, smacking the ball into the same top corner as his first with Ross similarly well beaten.

Possibly, the most irritating aspect was the lack of reaction in the second half. In fact, Ashfield, had a goal chopped off for offside, and missed another great chance before the third goal was scored after 52 minutes.

It would be easy to jump in with both feet after this display, but I’m choosing to be more circumspect for the moment. There looks to be a number of issues in the side, and speaking to others I’m not alone in this assertion. What I can say is I’m a lot less confident about the forthcoming season than I thought I would be.

Tomorrow, we will play Renfrew in the third/fourth play off with a 12 O’clock kick off, and then next Saturday we have Jeanfield Swifts coming to Holm Park. That should be a decent gauge of where we are at.

Match report written by Stuart McBay