A lively atmosphere at Meadows fairly impressive home ground - a modest following for the Lichties, maybe a few more than for a usual league game. Glaring bright winter sunshine for the early kickoff
Irvine is a big town and Meadow a well-financed club with a fair number of former senior pros amidst their ranks. Their wage bill apparently matches or exceeds ours. So this was always going to be a difficult tie and so it proved
We started out with Scott and Hislop up front, Redman, Sellars, Lunan and Gibson in the middle and Rennie, Ratrray, Bishop and McCulloch - elevated to captain - in front of Hill (our man of the match by a mile)
The game was fairly evenly matched for the first halfhour. Arbroath tried the more patient buildup with Gibson showing up wel. but the danger signals were there from Medda's quicker ball forward. Gradually they asserted themselves through sheer tenacit - denying any space to our key players, then getting the ball forward to two lively forwards
Hill kept us in the game with the first of a series of good saves after 5 minutes. But after 36 Bisop was beaten down the right and he ball across goal fell to their centrefoward Barr for an easy tap-in. That gave them a real boost. We made a bit f a surge just before halftime. However like herest of the game the ball into he box lacked quality and we seem to have no natural scorer
As the second half wore on, Doris, Ross and later Gates came on. Doris tried to create but though we had plenty ball second half we couldnt open up a tight home defence. Irvine themslves had a series of chances, inlcuding a one on one but Hill made several saves of real class to keep the game alive
In truth the second half was rather disrupted with injuries, bookings, deliberate timewasting but Arbrioath could have played another 90 minutes and not made the breatkthrough. Ross headed the one decent cross from Rennie wide,when Doris bhind was better placed. Hislop chased down the goalkeeper to creat a scae.
Bottom line was Irvine Meadow were more competitive than us in most positions. they knew who were our key players and kept them quiet. Our build up was tooo deliberate and we faced the same scoring problem that have best us in the league
For those who follow the Lichties this was no shock. No complacency, no real embarrassment - just a sense of frustration that we couldn't impose ourselves a bit better
Good luck to Irvine Meadow. The home fans created a good atmosphere second half
