Captain’s log with Jim McAlister
Good afternoon, everyone. I hope you’re all well. I started writing this week’s column on the back of an excellent league result away at Alloa Athletic on Saturday.
I’m convinced a lot of clubs will find Recreation Park an extremely hard place to go over the season. They have some very decent football players who, if given time, will cause teams a lot of problems.
It was far from a vintage display from us, but, for me, those are the best results to pick up: when you haven’t played well and still come away with all three points.
We managed the game excellently after we went ahead, and the bonus after conceding two soft goals last week was the clean sheet. For all the possession Alloa had in the second half, we limited them to few, if any, clearcut chances.
Our two goals came from the grandad of the team, Chris Millar; the first one being an excellent move and the second one a shank into the roof of the net.
Anyone who knows Midge will know that the goals haven’t been mentioned at all since the weekend … apart from on the group chat about half an hour after we left the ground and at least 20 times at training on Monday.
In all seriousness, they were two very important and well-taken goals for us, and it was great to see Midge get off the mark in his second spell with the club.
The result nicely sets up our next fixture. We host league leaders Ross County, who are continually adding to their extremely strong squad, so it will be a very good test for our boys to see where we are.
As we have seen from the first two rounds of results in this season’s Championship, it’s going to be a fantastic league and an extremely hard one to predict.
We were on Irn-Bru Cup duty on Tuesday night and came up just short against a very strong and experienced Dumbarton side.
The manager made a host of changes with a lot of boys making their debuts, and after a slow start in which the team went 2-0 down, they dominated from half an hour onwards.
They very unfortunate to lose the game 2-1 and showed we have good depth to the squad, which is a huge positive ahead of a long season. Another major plus was a fantastically well-worked goal finished off by Gary Oliver.
I must take the opportunity to apologise to Ross MacLean. ‘Chucky’ wasn’t best pleased that I referred to him as ‘Tidser’s painter and decorator’ in last week’s column. The wee man didn’t take it well at all.
This weekend sees us with a free Saturday, which isn’t ideal when we have started the season with two decent results as you want keep the momentum going.
On the bright side, it gives boys extra recovery time and allows any small niggles to clear up, especially wee Charlie Telfer’s wrist.
Honestly. It’s all we’ve heard about every day since pre-season, but to be fair to the wee man, he really soldiers on through the pain. Hopefully a Saturday without a game will see it heal and put an end to his (and our) agony.
On that note, I’ll finish by wishing everyone an enjoyable free weekend.
C’mon the Ton!
Jim
Image: Jonathan Mitchell
