Too many mistakes as the Shipyard suffer heavy defeat.

The Shipyard had no answer to this young new look Spartans side as they shipped seven goals without reply at Ainslie Park. The Lowland League team proved far too good for the Shippy in all departments, though several defensive errors did not help matters at all. The Shipyard conceded five goals in the closing twenty four minutes as they ran out of steam after their exertions in the midweek friendly at Hill of Beath seemed to take their toll.

The visitors got off to the worst possible start by conceding a goal with barely a minute on the clock. Poor defending out wide allowed a cross to come in to the back post and David Greenhill was able to loop his header over Jordan Mushet and in off the far post. The second goal a few minutes later was also highly avoidable as the Shippy tried to play the ball out of defence only to concede possession and Keith Murray made no mistake from the edge of the box. The Shipyard got a grip on things after this and limited Spartans to few chances albeit the hosts dominated the ball for longs spells. When the Shipyard did get up the park there was little in the way of support for lone striker Ewan Henderson.

Spartans created a couple of decent chances in the early stages of the second half but when the third goal came it was self-inflicted as Mushet could only palm a corner into his own net when under pressure from the Spartans attackers. Goal number four was again a disaster for the Shippy defence as despite a chance to clear the ball Murray was able to muscle himself in and nod the ball home from close range. The fifth goal was courtesy a poor refereeing decision as Graeme Haywood was harshly penalised for colliding with the Spartans forward who basically ran into Haywood’s legs as the defender turned to go for the ball. Murray scored the penalty with his kick going in off the post. Aaron Murrell scored the sixth goal from inside the box and also got the seventh two minutes from time though on this occasion he looked to be clearly offside.

Manager Alex Lowe spoke out after heavy defeat

It goes without saying that Alex was far from happy after the match when he said “I don’t want to keep on making excuses for heavy defeats but once again we were unlucky to lose by such a high scoreline. After an appalling start with two defensive errors, a slip from our fullback and a poor pass from our goalkeeper we found ourselves two goals down in the first few minutes against a very good team. After this we actually defended very well for the next hour and had some reasonable passages of play ourselves without creating too much clear cut chances. Spartans scored five goals in the last 24 minutes, two of which our goalkeeper may have done better, one was a soft penalty and another looked to be clearly offside. Avoiding some these goals would have put a much fairer reflection on the game”. Alex went on to add “I do not usually complain about the match officials but I thought that Spartans definitely got most decisions in their favour and in my opinion a number of crucial incidents were missed by the assistant referee”.

Alex had a degree of sympathy for his players when he said “The boys worked hard and did not get what they deserved from the game but we need to work a lot harder in training and in future games if we are going to improve our performances, cut out stupid errors and get positive results”.

Spartans: B. Carswell; A. Brown; E. Malone; J. Grant (M. Herd); A. MacKinnon; D. Greenhill; J. Dishington; K. Murray; A. Murrell; C. Duthie (J. Brown); C. Stevenson. Unused Subs: P. Thomson & C. Feather.

Burntisland Shipyard: J. Mushet; C. Lowe; E. Anderson; T. Arthur; G. Haywood; D. Robertson; A. MacDonald (A. Doig); B. Smart; D. Anthony (B. Saunders); B. Napier; E. Henderson (K. Masson).

Referee: M. McHendry.