By C McFarlane
November 7 2005

AS AIRDRIE 0 REDBRAE 6


airdrie,s participation in the scottish cup ended rather abruptly with this 6 goal hammering by their central scottish opponents.

with top scorer gray missing due to work right back drummond missing through injury and last years player of the year missing through ill health it was a changed airdrie that started today,s game.s graham got his second start of the year and andy clark returned to the starting line-up.

the first half can be summed up in two words "total domination".a 3-0 ht scoreline doesn,t reflect the superiority redbrae had in the half.only fine goalkeeping by johnny kept it at three.airdrie hardly got the ball and the few times they had the ball they were under constant pressure.goals arrived after 10,24 and 37 and redbrae keeper touched the ball twice.

the second half saw burton off and r graham on and a return to our regular 3-5-2 formation.the second half again saw redbrae dominant but airdrie saw a lot more of the ball in this half and had two or three nice passing movements.however excellent goalkeeping from johnny kept the score at 3-0 for most of the half. airdrie kept plugging away and big mark had two golden chances to score and his second miss from 8 yards was the best opportunity but he headered wide.redbrae scored 3 more in the last 15 minutes and got their reward for creating plenty of chances.a final score of 6-0 and a complete "humping" as the boss called it. the game ended on a sour note when the pardoe brothers both received red cards for language guided toward the ref who in truth didn,t have one of his better days and that was the view of both clubs.

in the end one can have no complaints about the score.if it hadn,t been for johnny it would have been double figures.redbrae were a class above anything we have played this year and their pace,extra fitness and the fact they are an established club with some excellant players all counted toward the final outcome.for our boys it was, hopefully, a learning experience and they see what is the requirement to achieve this level. they can,t be faulted for the effort,especially the front two who had a hard job on their own because airdrie couldn,t get up to support them due to their lack of the ball,and they kept going to the final whistle.at the end of the day you just have to hold your hand up and congratulate redbrae for their performance and we wish them all the best in future rounds.for us we can now concentrate on establishing ourselves in the league and we move on to next week.

team

j rowan

s graham
g cooper
f burton
n pardoe

r hendrie
m johnstone
s smith
s walker

a clark
g capaldi

r graham for f burton
k pardoe for s walker
g arbuckle for m johnstone