Friday 26th January, 2018 at 9:00am
For my choice of match on this occasion I haven’t gone far back into the history books. Since we achieved such a good result, the details are still fairly fresh in my mind, so let’s enjoy it.
We went up to McDiarmid Park in Perth and something fairly unusual happened after just 49 minutes – Thistle were awarded a penalty-kick and Stevie Lawless made no mistake, putting it away with rare aplomb. That was Thistle on their way to a memorable victory. The confidence grew both on the field and among the travelling Thistle supporters. Better still was to come later in the second-half. Ryan Edwards added a second goal in 62 minutes and the icing on the cake was delivered by Chris Erskine in the final minute, cutting through the home defence with relative ease, before placing the ball delicately but decisively behind Alan Mannus in the home goal.
The Thistle team on the night was as follows: – Tomas Cerny, Callum Booth, Jordan Turnbull, Abdul Osman, Chris Erskine, Stevie Lawless, Adam Barton, Christie Elliott, Danny Devine, Ryan Edwards, Kevin Nisbet.
The reward for winning this tie was a home game versus Rangers, in which Thistle put up a very good show drawing 1-1 with a fiery, gritty performance. Up to the 90th minute all was well, but for some reason we succumbed meekly in the first half of extra-time and finally lost 3-1.
This article started on a positive note, but on Thistle’s next visit to McDiarmid Park on the 19th August, things went considerably less well. I think it’s never the greatest idea to play the same team at the same ground twice in a matter of days and I was proved correct. We lost the league match 1-0 to a typical Michael O’Halloran goal. The ball is picked up fairly wide on the left, he drifts across the fringes of the penalty-box, plays a one-two with Steven Anderson, takes the return and fires home. If we know that’s the kind of thing he does, why can we not stop him? Football is easy, sitting in the stand, isn’t it?
Sadly, Callum Booth sustained an injury in a clash with Alan Mannus. It seemed fairly innocuous at the time, but of course he has been out for ages just returning to first team duty in the last week. It’s good to see him back!
Typical of me! I started this article on the front foot, everything fine, but finished in the doldrums. Habits dies hard!
Robert R
