Sat 2 March, 2013
Irn-Bru Scottish Football League Division 1 
East End Park, Dunfermline.
Steven Craig (4, 22, 33)
Ross Forbes (15)
Irn-Bru Scottish Football League Division 1
Sat 2 March, 2013. Kick Off: - 15:00
East End Park, Dunfermline.
It’s match day tomorrow and, by the laws of probability, that must mean a trip through to Fife for Thistle.
It’s Dunfermline Athletic that provide Thistle’s opposition tomorrow with the East End Park side having had to endure another difficult week. While it is difficult not to have sympathy for the plight of their players our only concern from 3pm tomorrow will be in trying to secure an important three points.
Said Alan Archibald when he spoke to ptfc.co.uk just a short time ago;
“It’s a difficult situation that they are in but I’m not sure that it will make that much difference when they got on the pitch. Although they lost last week against Morton by all accounts they were the better side in the first half and no matter what eleven players they put on the pitch tomorrow they will be good players; players with SPL experience.”
Having had an opportunity to watch back the 70 minutes of action from Tuesday night’s curtailed game with Cowdenbeath Alan again stressed the importance of starting a game well.
“It’s vital we start well tomorrow and try and get hold of the game early on. On Tuesday it took us 15 minutes to get into the game and that was disappointing. After that we had a good spell, got our full backs up the pitch which we like to do and we scored our goal. It’s important then that we do that right from the start tomorrow.”
All of which took us onto the all important team news and it doesn’t look as if there will be too many changes to the squad that journeys across to Fife tomorrow.
“The suspended pair of Hugh Murray and Paul Paton will miss out tomorrow but other than that everyone is fine and raring to go. The only real concern we have is Steven Lawless. Steven has picked up a bit of a bug since Tuesday night and he didn’t train yesterday. He trained today and although he looks a little so, so he is should be fine for tomorrow. Mark McGuigan had the same bug at the start of the week.”
Partick Thistle Stats
Current Form – Last Five Games
W D L F A
4 1 0 10 4
Scorers Season 2012-2013
Chris Erskine 12
Steven Craig 10
Steven Lawless 10
Kris Doolan 8
Conrad Balatoni 4
Stuart Bannigan 4
Ross Forbes 3
Aaron Muirhead 3
Aaron Sinclair 2
Sean Welsh 2
Christie Elliott 1
Stephen O’Donnell 1
Own Goal 1
Last Game
Irn-Bru Scottish League First Division
Saturday February 22nd 2013
Partick Thistle 1, Airdrie United 0
Dunfermline Athletic Stats
Current Form – Last Five Games
W D L F A
1 0 4 5 12
Scorers season 2012-2013
Andy Barrowman 12
Ryan Wallace 8
Ryan Thomson 5
Andy Kirk 3
Andy Dowie 2
Josuha Falkingham 2
Stephen Husband 2
Callum Morris 2
Joe Cardle 1
Craig Dargo 1
Andy Geggan 1
Stephen Jordan 1
Chris Kane 1
Jordan McMillan 1
Last Game
Irn-Bru Scottish League First Division
Saturday February 23rd 2013
Dunfermline Athletic 1, Morton 4
Last Meeting
William Hill Scottish Cup Fourth Round
Saturday December 1st 2012
Partick Thistle 0, Dunfermline Athletic 1
Teams
Thistle: Smith, O’Donnell, Sinclair, Murray (Craig), Muirhead, Balatoni, Lawless (Archibald), Bannigan, Doolan (McGuigan), Forbes, Erskine.
Dunfermline: Gallacher, McMillan, Jordan, Dowie, Morris, Geggan, Thomson, Husband (Byrne), Barrowman, Dargo (Wallace), Falkingham (Cardle).
Scorer
Dunfermline: Barrowman (35)
Crowd: 3,197
Match Details
Irn-Bru Scottish League First Division
Saturday March 2nd 2013
Dunfermline Athletic v Partick Thistle
Kick-off: 3pm
Prices
Adults £17
Concessions £11
Under 12s £5
Thistle fans will be housed in the East Stand
Tickets can be purchased prior to the match by ordering over the phone 01383745909, via email:
On the day of the Match, tickets can be purchased from our Away Ticket Kiosk – the Away Ticket Kiosk is located between the Main Stand and Macklin Motors – please remember the Ticket Kiosks are cash only – for card payments please come in to our Ticket Office at the front of the Main Stand – All fans are reminded to please arrive early.
Travel
By Supporters Bus
By Car
Car Parking is available in a large car park adjoining the East End of the ground and there are also facilities in various side streets. Multi-storey car parking approximately 10 minutes walk from ground.
By Bus
Buses destined for Kelty, Perth, St. Andrews and Kirkcaldy all pass close to East End Park.
By Train
There is a regular train service from Edinburgh to either Dunfermline Town or Dunfermline Queen Margaret Stations. The ground is a 15 minute walk from either Station.
Match Officials
Referee: Bobby Madden
Assistant Referees: Graham Chambers and Sean Carr
Other First Division Fixtures
Dumbarton v Cowdenbeath
Livingston v Airdrie United
Thistle made light work of Dunfermline with victory in this match taking them, temporarily at least, to within two points of the top of the league with a game still in hand.
Alan Archibald had been unhappy with the way his side had started in the abortive fixture with Cowdenbeath but he kept changes for this match down to the bare minimum. The suspended Hugh Murray missed out and in the only change from the Cowdenbeath match Ross Forbes came in to replace him.
If the manager had been unhappy with the way Thistle had started the game against Cowdenbeath then he couldn’t possibly have levelled the same accusation at his players in this match. Thistle started the game in positive fashion and were on the front foot from the very beginning and were rewarded with an opening goal as early as the 4th minute.
Steven Lawless had seen his shot turned round the post by Gallacher to earn Thistle a corner and it was from that corner that Thistle netted the opening goal; Steven Craig being in the right place at the right time to bundle the ball over the line from close range.
There was no immediate sign that the loss of the goal was going to further dispirit a Dunfermline side that had had a difficult week, but the second goal scored in the 15th minute did knock the stuffing out of them. The ball was knocked back into the path of Ross Forbes and from close on 25 yards out Forbes drilled a low shot wide of the grasp of Gallacher and into the net.
With Thistle looking dangerous every time they came forward a third goal arrived just seven minutes later. Struart Bannigan threaded through a perfectly weighted pass for Steven Craig and Thistle captain for the day calmly steered the ball wide of Gallacher and into the corner of the net.
The points in truth were all but secured with that third goal but a ruthless Thistle side made it 4-0 with just 33 minutes on the clock. Aaron Sinclair sent Chris Erskine clear down the left hand side. Erskine’s driven cross was nearly diverted into his own net by a Dunfermline defender but any reprieve for the home side was short lived; Steven Craig being on hand to force the ball home from close range and claim his first hat-trick in senior football.
Having established a four goal lead in such quick time the rest of the game proved to be something of an anti-climax. After half-time Dunfermline attempted to regain some pride and while they weren’t devoid of spirit neither did they look remotely like puncturing Thistle’s comfortable lead. Only once was Scott Fox in the Thistle goal seriously tested; Dunfermline sub Husband seeing his effort just before the hour mark turned round the post for a corner.
The only other Dunfermline effort of any note was a Ryan Wallace free kick that the Dunfermline player was able to get round the Thistle wall, but not past a perfectly positioned Scott Fox.
At the other end Thistle didn’t carry anything like the threat that they had in the first 45 minutes but they didn’t need to.
James Craigen, Kris Doolan and Mark McGuigan all received important game time as Thistle eased themselves to maximum points in a second half in which the tempo of the game dropped noticeably. The first half performance, however, was a professional and clinical one from Thistle and one that few First Division teams, irrespective of their internal problems, would have been able to contend with.
Manager Alan Archibald was an understandably a happy man when [link:HOME] spoke to him after yesterday’s emphatic 4-0 win at Dunfermline; the Thistle manager describing the performance as the “perfect away performance”.
Said Alan;
“If you want a perfect away performance then that was it. We got a fantastic start and we were absolutely delighted with that. That kind of start makes the game. In the Cowdenbeath game on Tuesday night we didn’t get out our own half in the first seven minutes and we spoke about that all week and I was delighted with the start that we made today.”
Alan continued;
“We knew the situation that Dunfermline are under and we knew that if we could get an early goal then we could go on and build upon that. They did respond well to the loss of the first goal and we knew that they would do. We had reports from their game the previous week and they did very well in the first half and I think today our second goal was really vital. We went on and built upon that as well and it was great that Stevie Craig went on to score a hat-trick.”
It wasn’t just the goals scored that pleased Alan;
“That’s three clean sheets out of four, taking away the Cowdenbeath game obviously, and we are delighted with that. That was one of the things that we spoke about at half-time; could we keep a clean sheet? Apart from the Cowdenbeath game the two centre backs have been outstanding and all over the pitch as a unit I thought we were outstanding today. It’s always a hard one when you come out for the second half when you have a comfortable lead. It is hard to keep the tempo up and that was the case today but the main thing for us second half was keeping the clean sheet. There is a pride about Scott Fox and the back four and they will tell you that they want to keep clean sheets. We had a wee phase a little earlier in the season where we hadn’t managed to keep a clean sheet since, I think, November. As a defender keeping clean sheets is your thing. Obviously the strikers want to score goals but you just want to keep a clean sheet.”
The four goal half-time lead allowed the manager to make some switches in personnel in the second half.
“It was always the plan to get them on. I thought James came on and did really well. He did well when he came on as a sub against Airdrie and hit the ground running when he came on and he did that today as well. With Steven Craig it was more a case of taking him off as he had been booked and it was good to give Kris Doolan some game time as well.”
The one down side about an otherwise excellent afternoon was the injury picked up by Stuart Bannigan and Alan was able to give us the latest on that.
“It’s not as bad as the one at Falkirk. His ankle blew up straight away and Kenny knew right away to get him off. Luckily we have no game this midweek so he has the full week to recover and come back for Saturday hopefully.”
