One team in Glasgow Partick Thistle

Partick Thistle V Airdrie United
Irn-Bru Scottish first Division
Saturday 13th February 2010
Firhill Park Glasgow
Referee: S.McDonald
Attendance 2,404
Reporter- Stewart Murray

The teams emerged from the tunnel in bright sunlight, with the Jags in their Camouflaged Pink strip in honour of think Pink day and Airdrie in their normal White, with Red diamond.

The game started poorly and went steadily downhill, with passes continually going astray and I hope I’m not being biased when I say this was mainly Airdrie’s doing.The crowd in the Jacky Husband, was so quiet you could have heard a canteen of cutlery drop. The first cheer of the day came when Lovering, who looked like he was doing an audition for “So you think you can dance” tripped over his own feet, did a twirl and then collapsed to the turf, much to the amusement of the Firhill faithfull, who gave him a chorus of “He Haw” “HE Haw” on his way back to his position. The game burst into life, when, in 29 minutes, Buchanan finished a great run with a shot from just outside the box. Robertson in the Airdrie goal, failed to hold and Paul Cairney was first to the ball, to force it into the net.

Airdrie were unlucky not to equalize when after a free kick by McLauchlan, Mark Smyth who must have seen an image of Adam Strachan on the Firhill crossbar, thundered a tremendous drive against the a fore mentioned, luckily cleared by the Thistle defence on the rebound.

With Three minutes to go to half time, Thistle stuck again. Buchanan and Rowson combined to create an opening for Paul Cairney to crash home Thistle’s second from just inside the box, causing an Exodus[well a few]of Airdrie fans to the exits.Thats how bad it was.

Airdrie made two substitutions at the start of the second half with Alan Trouten and the industrious Scott Gemmill coming on for McCann and McDonald. This seemed to give Airdrie a boost and a penalty seemed on the cards when after a great run, Gemmill was pushed in the box. There was a sigh of relief from Jags fans when the ref., waved away the Airdrie protests. Airdrie were starting to get their passing game going and when Gemmell again burst into the box, only a well timed tackle from Corrigan stopped a certain score. The referee must have then decided to liven up the crowd at this point, as he booked the poor Airdrie boy for diving and then started booking any player that made a tackle, including Trouten for taking a free kick before the whistle. As this was the boys second booking, he was given his marching orders; this was followed by the departure of Rowson, shown the Red card for a couple of simple fouls. I was surprised not to hear the chant of “Who’s the Fuhrer in the Black” from both sets of fans, after the way his arm went up and down in the second half.

The rumour from both dressing rooms is that a letter is on its way to Nicola Sturgeon asking for her intervention in the matter.

Paul Paton, who had just come on for Hodge, missed an unbelievable chance to make it three for the Jags, when he completely missed Liam’s cross into the box.

When the Referee blew the whistle for full time, the lad sitting next to me said “That was dire “My reply was “I don’t think it was that good”

Partick Thistle-Tuffey,Corrigan,Conroy,Hodge,Robertson,Archibald,Cairney,Rowson,Buchanan,Donnolly,Corcoran
Subs: Paton, Erskine.Lovell, Greachan and Halliwell

Airdrie-
Robertson,Parratt,Lovering,Storey,Smyth,Lagana,McCann,McDonald,O’Carroll,McLaughlin,Waddell
Subs: Keenan, Gemmill, Trouten, Nixon, Hollis