St Mirren Park, Scottish Cup 5th Round, 12/2/22
Entrance – Me £20 quid, Wee Man £5
Attendance – 3390
Pie – Pie x 2, Coffee, Juice £11
Pint – N/A
St Mirren Football Club
Founded – 1877
Nickname – The Buddies
Honours – Scottish Cup – 1925/26, 1958/59 and 1986/87, League Cup – 2012/13, Scottish League Second Tier – 1967/68, 1976/77, 1999/00, 2005/06 and 2017/18
Random Fact – Some of old ground Love Street’s turnstiles now reside 5 miles from my house at Formartine United’s North Lodge. They were purchased from an auction to help upgrade the HFL teams ground to help meet the standard of the League when the gained entrance for the 2009/10 season
As stated already last night this was by no means the original plan for the weekend. Todays game was a bit of a selfish choice as it took me closer to the current 42. But it also was new for both of us. Interestingly though, if all goes to plan the repercussions of todays choice will spark a double, lets say celebration in a couple of weeks, one for me and one for Wee Man.
Saturday game almost always means a point of interest pre game, since we stayed in Paisley last night after Benburb we decided to head back into Glasgow to visit the Riverside Museum. A great place to take a seven year old, that’s for sure, the fact such a ace place is free is amazing too. (Donation being made was a must). I am a big fan and so was Wee Man with the Porsche 911 being his favourite thing there. He was also a big fan of trying to find the ten dinosaurs. Nine we got and could we find that last bloody one…..
From here we headed to Greenhill Road with the thought of a drink before hand . The fact the ground is in the middle of a bloody industrial estate put those plans to the sword which was a blow as it was pissing down biblically pre match meaning our choices of what to do were limited. This led to sitting in the car playing Mario Kart, hangman and listening to the Sportsound on the radio . I could think of worse things to do in all honesty.
We headed into the ground reasonably early and much to the dismay Wee Man missed his chance to meet Paisley Panda who has just passed where we were sitting moments prior. A bad start as he was really gutted and it was brought on by me blethering in the concourse with a twitter acquaintance. This he made sure I knew too. But the mood was not to last as the Buddies put on a show and were good for their money and if there are goals Junior is happy. In all honesty I was impressed by them throughout, especially in the second half.
The first half was all Saints in a sun drenched stadium, which in itself seemed bizarre considering how horrific the weather was in the lead up. The pitch had been wrecked by the rain yet we could hardly see the action for the sun and our scarves and hats seemed to be overkill. St Mirren dominated proceedings, granted with little goal mouth action but they knocked the ball about well and did not let Kelty get a sniff in the game. Many would have thought this was inevitable but at the end of the day this did have the potential of a banana skin with the Fife side knocking the holders St Johnstone out in the last round. To be honest I said 4-0 St Mirren pre game(there is proof too). I couldn’t see Kelty doing it again and they were never allowed to by what was an entertaining St Mirren side. It took fifteen minutes for the first goal to go in, this coming form Alex Grieve. Richard Tait saw his self set up effort hit the post and Grieve was there to head past Darren Jamieson. On Grieve I was very impressed with him throughout. He can be a pest, he has a great attitude in terms of effort and the New Zealand international looks to be a quality player. Here i will also hand out an appreciation for the North Bank supporters. They are a great addition to St Mirren, ninety minutes of constant racket which doesn’t seem repetitive like some clubs fans, it creates an atmosphere and clubs could do with a mob like this backing their team. Good guys in my eyes. Continuing on the fans theme Kelty had a decent following with them and to be fair backed their side for the entire game despite goings on on the pitch. After the goal there was not much incident or action, just a very comfortable and professional performance from the hosts with Jordan Jones causing problems, Gogic (the man is a beast) breaking down anything Kelty tried to start and Shaughnessy strolling it like Beckenbauer. A good performance that just lacked a couple more goals.
HT 1 v 0
St Mirren came out on the attack to kill the game, this was more than clear and had a couple of chances before the second came. When it did I even applauded it as it deserved to be. Jordan Jones collected the ball on the left wing and from a the edge of the box with his angle closing curled a beautiful effort into the far top corner. The first for the Buddies for the wide man and one of the best goals we have seen this season. A third didn’t take long to come and it was Greg Kiltie who stuck it away. From our vantage point it looked like he did well to turn and get his shot away but after seeing it again he had far too much space to get turned. Decent finish none the less. Kelty had a wee spell mid half where Biabi latched on to a criminally short back pass but could only pull out a save from Alnwick who had been a spectator for around an hour prior. Alnwick then had another rare touch when Kallum Higginbotham struck a free kick down his throat. That was all the action the keeper saw in the match. Easy pay day for the hirsute goalkeeper. He really should have lost his clean sheet bonus when Biabi had another good chance but fluffed his lines again and sent the ball high over the bar and into the Kelty fans. He really had to do better. A fourth came for St Mirren late on when Kiltie was gifted a double after Robbie McNabb played a horrible ball towards his centre half Clark which ended up setting up Kiltie for a tap in to an empty net as Jamieson had came out to receive the ball from McNabb but never got it. A terrible goal to give away but a sign of tiredness as Kelty had been given the run around for the past eighty five minutes. That was pretty much that and St Mirren progressed without breaking sweat.
It took me a while to tick off St Mirren Park but it was a decent experience and although it was incredibly one sided it was still entertaining and had a good atmosphere despite the crowd being sub four thousand,this obviously down to the North Bank. Two of the forty two to go and Wee Man is seven shy of a hundred.
Me 222, Wee Man 93
FITBAWBAG 