Win over Clyde lifts mood at Annan
After Aaron Muirhead's little mishap during the speed exercise last week it was the turn of our captain, Kevin Neilson, to have what can only be described as a total disaster during Monday night's training session.
Not only was he in the firing line, baring his backside three times after our usual game of possession, but he also took one from the speed rope.
The manager changed things around to avoid a repeat of Aero's accident and put his trust in the hands of the players to help each other out.
Kevin and Jordan Halsman were working in pairs and things seemed to be fine when Kevin was powering away while Jordan held the rope. When it came to Jordan's turn, the belt somehow came away from his waist and flew back and smacked Kevin.
Where Aero might have been a wee bit lucky that he was facing in the opposite direction, Kevin wasn't so fortunate and he took one directly in the crown jewels. I don't know if I was lucky or unlucky to be one of the few boys to actually see it happen, but I felt the big man's pain!
You would have thought the skipper would have been a stick-on for the biscuits due to his performance, but although he was in the top three the honour actually went to Halsman. The reasoning behind it was that the manager had pulled him out of the running because he had already done a double session with Motherwell during the day, lazy little so and so!
The mood at training this week has been much better than the previous, and that's pretty much all down to our .
I tipped Clyde as title favourites in an earlier column before a ball had been kicked so I was a little bit surprised at how comfortable a victory it was.
In a role reversal from last week, Clyde never really troubled us until we were two goals to the good and they sent a lot of deliveries in to the box. I'll admit that we got lucky a few times when the ball dropped in our favour but there was very little created.
Sitting watching the game from the bench again, I was very impressed with our first-half performance. We got lucky with Bryan Gilfillan's early goal - or so I believe, because I missed it - but I felt we controlled the rest of the half with very good possession.
I'm not too sure if the manager told the boys to sit deeper in the second half because I was warming up during half-time but Clyde certainly enjoyed more possession in our half, yet still only had one decent chance for their efforts.
We broke away with less than 20 minutes remaining when Bryan Felvus (or Friar Tuck as someone called him on a fans' forum) scored his first competitive goal for the club. We were confident at that point it was game over and we were actually unlucky not to stretch the lead even further when Halsman smacked the post near the end.
In terms of performance, it was like night and day from our home match against Elgin the previous week. We were lacking in every department during that one, the determination and hunger shown at Clyde wasn't there either.
The players have been talking to each other and we know it's so important that we score first in every game, but even more so when we're at Galabank. We've got great confidence in ourselves not to concede too many goals but it's so difficult to break teams down with our home ground being so tight.
I'm sure I said it last season, but it's so important that we start games on the front foot and get our noses in front early because when we don't we tend to struggle at home.
Let's hope we get ourselves a positive start to build on against Queen's Park this weekend. Although it's very early in the season, this would set us up nicely for a really big game against Berwick Rangers the following week.
I'll be very interested to see which way the manager chooses to go against Queen's Park on Saturday. In each game against them last year, we changed our formation quite drastically to combat their style. With such a positive result and performance at Broadwood, I wonder what will be behind Harry's thinking for this one.
Whatever it is, I'm sure all will be revealed at training on Thursday night.
Comment number 1.
At 26th Sep 2010, canli wrote:Many of these players have two options: to either stay and fight for their place in the starting 11 or to move onto pastures new and look to resurrect their career elsewhere.
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