Raith Against The Machine

I knew McGlynn wasn't going to pitch in all the apprentices, it's not his style, but I'm surprised that he's left the likes of Berra and Ross out there. Good to see Spencer get a break though, and can only hope that MacDonald hasn't travelled for an entirely trivial reason.

Is... is Davo playing in... midfield?

I know that picking up on Falkirk player's faults is like shooting fish in a barrel, but look at the positioning of Charlie Telfer (I believe) and Ethan Ross for the winner, from Poplatnik looking for the pass to Ross taking his first touch. He's got a three yard head start as they enter the frame and he's twelve yards behind by the time the pass is complete. Just totally lacking the absolute fundamentals. He can stop that pass from even looking like an option by just matching Ross's initial run for another five strides.

Aye, it's brilliant. I don't want to keep beating Dick, but he really does get suckered right in, and he'd fallen for the exact same trap two minutes prior. It's staggering that Falkirk can't do that more often. The individual quality is there, but the set up is so poor it's actively detracting from the likes of Morrison's ability to perform. Maybe if Craig McGuffie stops smashing the ball into the stand they'd get on slightly better, too.

On the red card, you can clearly see why it's been given. There's not a chance any other player on the park receives a booking for that second challenge at that point of the game, but referees don't officiate in a vacuum and Tumilty's first booking was nailed on, then he had his wee daft wandering off with the ball. I have a little bit of sympathy, because I don't think that second one is in that reckless/daft category. In as much as, after wandering off with the ball, if he thinks "right, better screw the nut" (and maybe he did) he still makes that attempt to win that ball. His elbow isn't up, it's more than his forearm goes into the player's lower back, but he's just out jumped and loses out. It's a foul, but there's no malice or anything in it. First booking was totally unnecessary though, so he does only have himself to blame.

Waiting on the quote coming back from the sculptor before announcing the statue and the ten year deal at the same time imo

Not for all of us, my darlings x

Couple of highlights that stand out: - Ross Matthews giving it big licks to the Falkirk support. Loves them, so he does. - Berra and Ruth coming together in the centre circle for a loose ball, only for Tom Lang to just breenje through the pair of them and steam away with the ball. - Ethan Ross badge kissing again. He knows the way to my very fickle heart. - Davie McGurn, in a Falkirk trackie, sort of trying but definitely failing to keep from joining in the full-time celebrations

If you offered one of the jobber managers like Allan Johnstone or Gus McPherson any one of Keena, Williamson, Telfer or McGuffie they'd take them. I imagine they'd have taken Michael Ruth on loan in the summer if they could've, too. Probably Stevie Hetherington, if you only look at his Alloa performances and Men-In-Black away his Falkirk form. So maybe not half the squad, but a sizeable number of them. And that's before we get to David McGurn...

Aye, in the second half. They'd done nothing up til half time but Dick was like a different player after the break. He recovered a bit as it went on, but he was all at sea for the first fifteen minutes. That said, it remained Falkirk's one real outlet and still only brought about the goal. There didn't seem to be any substantial threat that Falkirk would score a second. They must've had 70%+ possession and maybe five touches in the Rovers box? Which, of course, isn't telling Falkirk fans anything they didn't already know months ago. I wasn't surprised by how bad Falkirk were, but it's notable just how many "good" individuals they have. If Falkirk just suddenly went bust tomorrow and all their players were free to join new clubs, at least half that matchday squad would resurface in the lower half of the Championship. Absolutely criminal mismanagement to have a team that's so much less than the sum of its parts. Which is not to let the players off scot-free, as individuals they could certainly be doing more, but that's such a clear systemic failure from the top down. As for the Rovers, that was a fantastic result. Not so much beating Falkirk, or even specifically being down to ten men, but losing Tumilty really dents our ability to play. Being a man down has a huge impact on the way we play. McGlynnball is based around passing and moving within small spaces, which is almost impossible when you're a man down. The way you'd want to adapt would be to use your fullbacks as an outlet, and Tumilty is our most natural choice for that. As it was, the defence did what it does well, Spencer and Matthews destroyed brilliantly, and Varian did what he had to do really well, just roughing up the centre halfs. As for the wingers, Zanatta spent the second half trying stuff and failing, whereas Ross was barely involved until that pirouette that slipped past two defenders. Sublime football, a real gem.

Liam Dick, who was brilliant in the first half, sold the jerseys twice in the first five minutes of the half. Got away with the first one, didn't get away with the second. Needs to be much better.

I won't win a Pulitzer for this, but Falkirk have been very bad. Their whole strategy seems to be "give to Morrison" which could be effective, but his individual strategy is "give it to Williamson" who can't get past Liam Dick. We've all seen enough football to know how difficult it is to see out an hour or so against ten men, but on the evidence of that half, Falkirk aren't going to exactly be hammering on the door. Morrison hit the post, but that was from a turnover when we still had eleven men on the park. Tumilty's first booking was sheer stupidity, and he was winding the ref up seconds before, but that second yellow looked like such an innocuous foul to me. If he's used an elbow then fair enough, but from where I am you'll see five challenges like that a game without ever seeing a card. Brilliant strike from Matthews for the goal. We'd looked fairly dangerous in the first 20 minutes but had - understandably - dropped off a bit, so it was a great goal to get. We should still have plenty of threat on the break, but we haven't got a huge amount of scope for rotation in this squad so tiredness could really start to tell by the end.

Wow. Absolutely no chance that's worth a yellow card.

Varian might be a very effective forward, but he's no striker.

Decent sized away support has turned up to see Davie McGurn, judging by the queue outside.

With all the success the club have had re-issuing classic kits, the next step should be to petition Copa for a modern take on the Diadora shellsuits that everyone on the bench had that day.

Have you ever met anyone from Glenrothes? Leave them where they are.

Falkirk entering their cheatcode and bringing in Davie McGurn for the game, I see. Trying to beat the Rovers by becoming the Rovers. A bold tactic.

Good for the balance in the midfield, too. You can't argue with results and we've been doing well, but I'd always be much happier with Matthews alongside either Spencer or Tait, rather than them both together.

The East Fife game was in the Challenge Cup so Hibs had no reason to stop Tait from playing. If they really do want him back in January, I imagine they'll ask that he sits out this one. If Tait plays, I'd take that as a strong sign that we'll have him for the full season, but I'd be very surprised if that is the case.

I thought at the time that the foul for Lithgow's first booking was a little soft. Once the foul is given it's got to be a booking because Varian is angling in at goal, but they're shoulder to shoulder and it's not a huge amount of contact to put Varian down. The second one, though, is the epitome of naive defending. You can see from a mile off what Varian's going to do, and Lithgow gets far too tight and plays into his hands. Over the piece, though, Morton really did play into our hands. They managed to shut Zanatta down fairly effectively, but totally neglected Brad Spencer, who had all the time in the world to come and get the ball off the defence and move 20 yards forward before moving the ball on. It was just a matter of being patient and waiting for the chances to come, which they duly did. You can see what Ugwu brings to the table, and he's always liable to shake a goal loose for himself or someone else with the way he puts himself about, but he's too obvious with his fouls to really turn up the dial on a defence. We touched upon it during the game, but none of the players running off him look like they've got any belief that they'll score. A couple of times Morton had a man over and running at goal but hesitated long enough to let Berra or Musonda back in to get a block. I think the general consensus is that Morton have a bit more about them than Ayr do, but Ayr's second half performance a few weeks back made them look like a potentially more effective unit than Morton did at any stage yesterday, and Hamilton looked half the side of either at NDP. Someone's going to stay up just by virtue of not being quite as bad as two others, but right now I wouldn't bet on any of those three.

Lovely bit of badge kissing too.

We've got plenty of ex-Falkirk players, so Gary Deans must be shitting himself. Although I'm sure Paul Sheerin will be looking to take a scalp from a team flying high in the division above. It'd be a real question of intent.

That must've been incredibly tight for the offside. @Hank Scorpio Did you get a decent view?

Morton might want to put someone on Brad Spencer. Absolutely everything we do begins with him and he's under absolutely no pressure.