Footballfirst
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I decided to take in Penicuik v Musselburgh today. It was an awful game to watch, not helped by a poor surface and an incompetent referee, who seemed to think that every free kick to the home side was worthy of a yellow card.
Nicky Reid's scrappy winner from close range typified the contest.
The ref's decision to reverse a thrown-in for time wasting by Musselburgh (it wasn't particularly excessive) with around 5 mins to go also triggered a melee involving both sets of players , coaching staff and a few fans. The ref and both linos chose to stand back around 15 yards away and allow the scrapping to play out without any attempt to intervene. The outcome was two red cards, one to a Penicuik player and the second to a Musselburgh coach, and 11 minutes of added time.
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Well done Gretna. I thought they had a good chance of winning (not 6-1), when I saw the Hearts team.
They were missing 5, due to injury, plus two away with the first team in Czechia. A couple of potential replacements were also away with Scotland U17s in Croatia.
Either way it would be a chastening experience for the youngsters, Jamie MacDonald and Liam Fox.
Based on early season form, Gretna certainly looks to have the wherewithal to avoid the drop once again, but who are now favourites for the trapdoor.
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4 minutes ago, JCScouting said:
After having about 45 mins to calm down. Game was very fast pace, could have went in at half time 1-1 maybe even 2-1 up just unlucky not to take our chances.
2nd half Hearts wingers McLuckie and Pollock were rapid, balls down the wing where we gave them a bit too much space crossed in and players managed to get on the end of it.
We hit the bar, laidlaw took his goal well and we maybe could of had 1 more. I think a fair scoreline would have been 3-1, 4-2.
Off the ball incident might not be as bad as first made out jostling in the box and unfortunately Barr off injured. Robinson also off injured.
Ref missed a blatant handball, Player moved his arm into the ball right infront of me. Would have changed the outcome but he missed a few key points for both teams not just berwick.
Offsides wise I think there was a few poor calls and with the hearts boys being rapid the linesman seemed to be a yard or 2 off the pace. Gave Buchanan offside when he wasn't also.
Overall a disappointing night where the game wasn't allowed to flow much due to silly stoppages, annoyingly normally when berwick had possession. Hearts definitely deserved the 3 points can't argue that. Some great players in the squad but 6-1 was certainly flattering.
A fair summary of the game, but I thought Berwick stood off Hearts too much, allowing them time to pick the through passes which led to most of the goals. When Hearts get the opportunity to break at pace, then they will exploit it. Both Linlithgow and Tranent didn't allow Hearts any time or space on the ball (at least in the first half) and got some success through that. Berwick was just a bit too passive in that regard.
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Strange game tonight v Tranent, but one where Tranent got their tactics right. Once they scored their soft penalty they were content to hold onto what they had and were very effective in that. It didn't make for the prettiest game to watch, but paid off with the three points.
Hearts dominated the second half but Tranent defended in numbers and limited the number of chances the Hearts had. The Tranent central defenders in particular were excellent.
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47 minutes ago, GordonS said:
It's like you both decided to ignore what I actually wrote and made up in your head a story to explain it away.
No, Hearts don't play great football. If they didn't, they wouldn't have been getting hounded for an hour by a mid-table fifth-tier team of part-timers who will never make a living playing football. They bang the ball over the top more often than the worst clichés of old Junior football. Some of them can't pass a ball 5 yards and their touch is dreadful. I don't believe the academies of any similar-sized club in Nordic countries, the Netherlands and elsewhere has players whose technique is as poor as a few of the guys that played on Tuesday.
This bullshit about "bitter" is just a cheap attempt to undermine my point without disagreeing with it. First of all, I felt exactly this way at half time when we were 2-0 up and sent the WhatsApp message below to my pals' group. I'm don't get bitter about losing, I was happy for Berwick fans when they beat us a couple of weeks ago. That's how football is supposed to work.
I'm not bitter, I'm angry. My biggest desire in football is to see successful Scottish international teams. We have been massive underachievers for more than quarter of a century, producing much weaker players than countries that should be our peers, and this is why. We don't teach our your players technique, we teach them to "find ways to win". All our guys can run hard, tackle and keep their positional shape. Technically, we're no better than Kazakhstan and if it weren't for players developed in other countries or by their fathers we would be even further down the pecking order.
As I said, the way Hearts found to win will obviously do nothing to make those players better and taught them absolutely nothing they can use as professional footballers. On principle I'm against B teams in the Lowland League, but if they're here then they should at least use it to develop players. They're not, and if anything they're making things worse by wasting time and matches that could be used to develop better footballers.
I watched a lot of youth football pre-Covid when we had a real development league, and saw a fair bit of Hearts at Oriam. I'm certain that's a better way to develop young players than the farce I saw on Tuesday - although in Scotland the rot starts at much younger age groups anyway.
Whether you agree or not, you can believe the words I've typed at face value or you can make up wee stories in your head about how I'm just bitter because my team lost. I can't stop you from being wrong.
I think you are misinterpreting what you saw on Tuesday night as being the norm for Hearts. If you listened to what Liam Fox said you would realise that the first half was the worst performance he had ever seen from the B Team.
Hearts didn't resort to playing long balls because it's their style of play. It was their failure to play simple 15-20 yard passes with any accuracy, that more often than not lost them possession (partly due to the Rose's press and them winning the physical battles). Fox was on the case of the centre backs after the 2nd misplaced pass, the 2nd of many more to come during the 1st half and it had an impact on how the rest of the team played. Pollock was told to get himself "switched on" as Hearts were 2nd best all over the park. MacDonald may have had a couple of good saves, but should have saved the free kick (well struck but at head high on the side of the goals he was covering). He also sold the 3rd goal by coming out unnecessarily.
Hearts only got control of the game in the final quarter when Tait found space to drive forward and play a one-two (1st goal). The second goal was a good move to the bye line and a good cross to the back post. The third was a long ball, but would have been harmless had the keeper not screwed up. The winning goal also came from a good move to the bye line and a low cross.
I watch a lot of academy football at the Oriam and I can assure you that Hearts, at all age groups, predominately play a passing game with pace.
Rose should have beaten Hearts, but were wasteful in front of goal. That's the message you should be taking from the game.
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8 minutes ago, Stag Nation said:
Aren’t membership and licensing entirely different things?
Not in this context.
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We may finally see a WOSFL club make it to the LL (or at least the playoff) next season as Beith have submitted a membership application to the SFA. If successful, it should remove an obstacle in the path for other licenced clubs to progress if they are good enough.
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8 minutes ago, Cowdenleith said:
Gonnae learn how to spell ‘Cowdenbeath’
I blame my schooling. I went to Beath Senior High
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Hearts B League fixtures
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PDF of the full fixture list if you want to keep it.
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On 02/07/2024 at 15:52, Kelheart said:
Any info on Robbie Cole signed him from CSS but former Hearts youth player
He's quite skilful and links up play well, but probably doesn't score as many as he should. He played out wide when he was at Hearts but played as a striker or as a number 10 at CSS.
He was part of a strong age group when he was with Hearts, which included several players who have continued to play at a good level. Aaron Hickey, Josh Doig, Connor Smith, Scott McGill and Harry Stone will be the best known, but others still play in the lower SPFL, LL and EOS (Cammy Logan, Josh Grigor, Lucas Berry, Cammy Graham, Michael Mbewe, Leeroy Makovora, Brodie Strang and Robbie Neave.
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Either restrict them to a small area in a corner of the ground away from or ban them.
Their drums were noisy enough without them reverberating in the enclosure. Smoke flares and fireworks should always be a no-no. Few of them have any interest in the football. They are just content to make a noise and being a nuisance while videoing themselves doing so.
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Liam McFarlane should be an asset to you. He has all the physical attributes you would want in a modern keeper.
However, be aware that he doesn't always use those attributes to best effect. Despite his size, he's a bit timid and tends to shy away from physical contact, so avoids coming out to take cross balls. Another observation is that he also has a tendency to favour diving to his left when facing penalties.
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Hearts have recruited a couple of 17 year olds from down south to join their B Team, Henry Lister from Nottingham Forest and Dom Plank from Wolves. They played a couple of U18 games for Hearts, as trialists, at the end of last season.
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I think next season may not quite be the success that it was last season for Hearts B. They still have a core of 5 LL experienced 19 year olds (Sandilands, Rathie, Forrester, Duncan and Drysdale) who should feature at the start of the season (assuming end of season fitness issues are resolved). The next age group has McLuckie, Nair and Ross who played to varying extents in the LL last season. A further year younger Wilson, Stevenson and Gillies should be available. That's a total of 11 starting contenders, but no goalkeeper.
I therefore expect a reliance on players with little or no LL experience, or pushing on a few of the new crop of 16 year olds. It could take them a few months to adjust to adult football, as occurred in Hearts B's first season. Several of the 16 year olds are decent prospects though.
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Hearts B has been the cheapest in the league over the last two seasons at £5/£2.
I assume that they have only sought to cover their rental costs at Ferguson Park and Ainslie Park.
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Being a bit of a groundhopper myself, I've seen him at many games. I even saw him at Luncarty for a Scottish Cup game back in August.
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I wish all clubs would do a summary of their playing squad as below.
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The structure of the pyramid is actually quite logical and based on a simple three tiered principle, with local regional leagues, feeding into larger regional leagues, feeding into the national league.
------------------------ SPFL
----------HL ----------------------- LL
NCL, North Junior, Midland ------ EOS, WOS, SOS
Too many people get hung up on the relative strengths of each local regional league. What does it matter that the NCL and the SOS have only 12 clubs each? It's not the fault of the SOS that there are 80 teams in the WOS. If the best clubs in those leagues are not at the same standard as the others at the same tier, then they won't progress to a higher tier or win inter regional cup competitions. No-one loses out. Each local league is ultimately only responsible for the clubs in its region. If you feel that the SOS should be at tier 10, then you could equally argue the teams in the WOS Prem, shouldn't have to face clubs in WOS D4 in cup competitions, such is the difference in standard.
There are perfectly valid arguments to be had about the population imbalances at HL & LL level, e.g. should the LL be split LLE and LLW? However the geographical split and travel distances involved in the local regional leagues make sense (with the odd exception!)
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On 21/05/2024 at 16:20, Burnieman said:
The changing rooms are the other side of the road/carpark. Also, despite having 2 decent stands, there are no facilities at all inside the fence.
There are actually 3 stands with a total of just under 200 seats. You must have missed last season's ground improvement
with a couple of portaloos now in situ at the far end of the stands.
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16 minutes ago, Socks said:
I saw a bit of the game tonight and was also there when you beat Luncarty in March (6-0 I think) so Broxburn have certainly looked good when I've seen them. Please excuse my ignorance of your team, but who is the baldy number 15 that sits in front of the defence? He was an absolute standout last time I was there and also good from what I saw tonight. Certainly looked like a player who had played at a higher level.
Well done on a well-deserved promotion, and good to see the pyramid starting to take the shape we'd all probably have expected.
Lewis Turner. He was a bit part player for Bonnyrigg in their promotion season, then had short spells at Gretna and Penicuik before joining Broxburn. He works his socks off, but has a tendency to pick up a few yellow cards.
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Dalbeattie it is.
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Boness United 2024/25
in Lowland League
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Some of them are only regular starters through necessity.
Rathie, Nair, Drysdale and Sandilands all out with longer term injuries.
Tait and Pollock played with the first team in a bounce game v St Johnstone yesterday.
Wilson is away with Scotland U19s.
Bo'ness fully deserved their win. They were just a bit more physical and streetwise, including managing the ref to their advantage.
Hearts had little threat or composure in the final third, but were well in the game until the 2nd goal went in.