Dumbarton 0
Clydebank 2
League (Division 1)

Match Report

Bankies fans know a thing or two about their football.

Not for them the moronic chants of some supporters, they prefer instead to choose their songs according to the pattern of the game.

On Saturday they certainly had their fingers on the pulse of an interesting local derby with two ditties which summed up an excellent afternoon for their heroes.

The first, that old Bankies standard "Feed the Blair" invited the Clydebank side to make full use of striker Millar's return to form, and so they did," setting him up for a clinical opening goal.

The second, and probably more telling, was entitled "Relegation to You", and described how the Boghead side look a good bet for the big drop to Division Two at the end of the season.

They won't be far wrong. For the side which has whipped Hearts and Ayr at home and drawn away to Motherwell in recent weeks looked a poor, lacklustre outfit, and could well be on their way out of the wrong end of the League.

Bankies, on the other hand, looked more likely to escape from Division One at the top end.

This was the game when, at last, they came back to the sort of form which took them through 13 games unbeaten before the enforced winter shut-down.

The main reason for the upsurge in performance were undoubtedly the resurgence of Gerry McCabe and Blair Millar as the team's two most influential players.

McCabe was right back to top form, spraying telling passes in all directions, and crowning a fine show with a great 20-yard drive.

Millar, apart from heading his 54th-minute goal was always in the thick of the action, ample reward for weeks of hard graft when nothing went right for him.

But despite, or perhaps because of, the huge lift Millar and McCabe gave to Clydebank, the two best men on the park were, for me, Bobby Williamson and Jim Given.

Williamson, converted from winger to right-back in place of the suspended Treanor, revelled in his new position, letting virtually nothing past him.

A measure of the effectiveness in an unfamiliar position is that Dumbarton's Blair and Donnelly, both operating down the left were substituted early in the second half.

Jim Given, meanwhile, stormed up and down the left side of the park all afternoon, growing in confidence as the game went on, obviously benefiting from the form of his outfield partner, McCabe.

Given is one of the strongest and most effective players in the Bankies team on his day.

Both goals came from his side of the park, although he was not himself directly involved.

In 54 minutes, Gervaise put Coyne in on the left, and his teasing cross beat a static Sons defence to leave Miller with a free header from close range.

Five minutes later, Ronald's corner glanced off a defender's head to the edge of the box, and McCabe got there just before Given to thump a low shot into Carson's far corner.