A welcome three points boosts Shipyard.
At the end of the day it was three points, three goals, a clean sheet and the monkey off the back. Maybe the scoreline did not reflect the true story of the match, Ormiston will point to a penalty miss when the score was 1-0 and a decent amount of possession, nonetheless, the Shippy took their chances and when called upon keeper Michael Gibb repelled everything that came his way. As manager Stuart Innes said after the match “we have played better recently and lost, so I will take the win and build on it.” As expected, Jason Finlay will be out for a few weeks following the injury he picked up last week at Haddington and Benn Hutchison was missing through illness.
There was not a lot of action in the early exchanges as both teams struggled to settle but that changed in the 13th minute as the Shipyard moved into the lead with a great goal. From a Robbie Crawford corner Andy Watt converted with an overhead kick from around six yards. Ormiston could have been level two minutes later when they were awarded a penalty after Connor McQuade committed a foul just inside the box. Chris Hogg struck his kick low to Gibb’s right, however, the young Shippy keeper was equal to the task and pushed the ball round the post at the expense of a corner. Watt and Crawford both saw shots held by the visitor’s keeper Kieran Beveridge and Watt was denied by the keeper again following good build up from Jonny Galloway and Ross Lennie. The Shipyard doubled their advantage on 29 minutes with an almost carbon copy of the first. This time it was Iain Millar on the end of a Crawford corner and big Milzy nodded home at the back post. Gibb palmed away a dangerous cross before making a good save on the 40-minute mark when he was at full stretch to touch away an Anes Subasic effort. The Shippy were on the back foot for the closing minutes of the half but Ormiston failed to trouble Gibb any further.
Dean Hunter replaced the injured Ross Lennie at the break forcing the Shippy into a change of formation. On 57 minutes a speculative Crawford effort struck the junction of post and bar before being cleared. Big Milzy seemed keen to get another goal and went close twice within a minute. A header from another corner looked a goal all the way until Beveridge produced a great save to deny him. From the resultant corner the ball broke to the giant defender and he hooked a shot onto the top of the net. Millar was involved again as Watt headed over after getting on the end of his long throw. With 12 minutes remaining Kyle Forbes missed a chance to get his team back into the match when he miscued at the back post and with the clock approaching 90 minutes Subasic lobbed over after a defensive slip. Reece Brown fired across the face of goal from a tight angle, however, deep in added time Brown got his goal thanks to a brilliant run from Jonny Galloway who skipped past the Ormiston defence and when the ball broke to Brown, he was able to put the ball away from close range.
The Shipyard are back at Recreation Park again on Saturday (14/09/2019) with Threave Rovers the visitors in the South Region Challenge Cup 2nd round. Kick-off 2.30pm.
Burntisland Shipyard: M. Gibb, C. McQuade (Jor. Galloway), G. Skinner, R. O’Donnell, I. Millar, Jon. Galloway, R. Crawford, S. Strang, A. Watt (G. Dolan), R. Lennie (D. Hunter), R. Brown. Unused Sub: A. Cooper.
Ormiston: K. Beveridge, K. Korpalski, R. Cochrane, R. Fairnie (S. Ballard), T. Prior, C. Hogg, L. Reid (C. Scott), T. Ruwona, S. Brown, A. Subasic, K. Forbes (D. Boyne).
Referee: G. MacDonald.