Saturday 3rd November, 2012 at 9:07pm
‘Objective obtained’ would pretty much sum up yesterday’s Scottish Cup tie with Cove Rangers. The important thing in cup-ties is to make sure you reach the next round no matter how you do that and Thistle did precisely that yesterday afternoon.
In many ways it was a professional, if unspectacular performance, but one of the major talking points after the game was the 27th minute sending off of Steven Craig.
When speaking to [link:HOME] after the game yesterday manager Jackie McNamara, like everyone else, was in no doubt that it was a red card offence.
“It was a sending off. It was the linesman that spotted it; he seemed to see everything okay in the first half. We can’t complain about it though. Steven has just been petulant. The Cove boy has fallen on top of him and he’s just stuck out a boot and caught him. Steven’s an experienced player and he knows that he’s been silly. It’s disappointing that it not just had an impact on today’s game but will also impact upon next week’s game with Dunfermline which is a crucial game for us.”
Even with ten men Jackie feels that his side should have pressed home the advantage that Ross Forbes 13th minute goal had given them.
“On another day we could have scored more goals. Baring their goal and the penalty I think Cove only had one other shot on goal. The one thing that disappointed me today was the fact that I didn’t think that the front players were at their game today. I thought that they had opportunities to turn and get at them in the first half but I thought that they were a bit quick to get rid of the ball rather than taking responsibility themselves.”
“Things can go against you in a game but we should still have killed them off at 2-0 even though we were down to ten men. They’ve got a lift from us not taking our chances and then they got another lift with the penalty. It was never a penalty. The ball clearly struck Conrad on the chest but the referee seemed to see something different from the rest of us.”
“Getting through today was the most important thing. I said to the players at half-time to make sure that they didn’t give anything away and make sure that they kept passing the ball. The good thing is that we got through, the disappointing thing is that we have lost Steven Craig for next week. Stuart Bannigan is still struggling as well and we’re still waiting for confirmed results on Sean Welsh’s injury although the good thing about Sean’s injury is that as far as we know it isn’t a break.”
