CountryBumpkin

Raith TV will be raging that the BBC got an interview with Stanton Hope Connolly puts in a good performance tonight, he's been pretty underwhelming this season, mostly due to us no longer playing in a way that gets the best out of him regularly.

Welcome to our world. This has been the story of our season.

The biggest factor is probably social media and anonymous stupidity that goes with it. It's far too easy to organise these things on crap like Snapchat or Twitter/X without any consequences. People recording it and hoping for engagement out of it with again no repercussions of any note. Policing and stewarding is also becoming much more passive, having the kids pat themselves down on the way in to check for pyro is the most nonsensical thing, even though there are valid reasons for stewards to not manhandle children. Clubs probably need to take more responsibility to identify these people both at the time and after the fact, there is CCTV, every ticket has an associated person and seat so finding them won't be difficult. Our pitch looked to suffer some damage from the flare at the end, no idea why the guy didn't at least lift it off the field of play instead of just watching it and dropping his hard hat. I'd like to think the person responsible is identified and billed for the repairs

He was moving back to challenge for it and stopped, there was no shout or call from the keeper to leave it. Perhaps didn't duck out from it but to just pull up and let it go unattended wasn't great.

Just watched the highlights. While Todd is a diving wee shite, what is Murray doing ducking out of the header and letting the ball drop in the box for Todd to even get close to? Really poor. Some save by Kev and some dodgy ref decisions overall but two nice finishes in their own right. Easton with precision again, quality stuff.

I mean, depending on how the artificial surface vote goes, we'll need a shiny training pitch soon too. The baffling thing is pinning their goalscoring hopes on a striker who has 55 career goals at 29 years old. That's piss poor.

Wasn't a great spectacle of a game by any stretch of the imagination, some really poor contributions on both sides, but one took their chances and the other didn't. Todd looked awful all game, compounded by his wee dive at the beginning of the match and Jakubiak could still be out there now and still fail to score. He's just hot garbage. For Rovers, Mullin wanted 20 touches to control a ball every time and James Brown wasn't much better. We left so much space in the middle of the park it made Otoo and Hamilton look good. Wonder save again from Dabrowski to change the momentum and a fine finish from Easton to seal it. Not sure what went on with the Pars right back with the shite hair, but Easton was rightly booked for the challenge. No need to be rolling around like he was though.

Its definitely part of it, but our attendances were up before we went on any unbeaten run at the start of the season too. There is a refreshed air of optimism at the club and surrounding community that we've not seen in a while. Being a challenger helps of course.

If a loan is between players in the same league, there is an automatic clause that stops them from playing against their parent club. I think its something that has to be negotiated between the clubs if they come up against each other in play-offs. Cup games is easy, you say they're cup tied.

To be fair, Sammy and his tank was much better quality than that absurd train Tifo, probably cost less to make too. Social media is all about engagement, doesn't matter if its positive or negative, its overall numbers that earn money and reach. Fair play to them overall.

Kicking into the wind in Arbroath should have been vetoed in the first minutes of the second half, we should have looked to play shorter, get the ball on the ground and actually pass the ball around, something we've rarely done lately. With Byrne, Matthews, Brown, Turner and Mullin on the pitch, that shouldn't have been beyond us, instead we were horsing it and losing out on almost every second ball. However, thats done with now, onto Dunfermline and ideally some decent football to beat them with.

Not seeing whats so special about Kane so far, though I said the same for Alex Samuel. Though I was blatently unaware that he had the power of Christ compelling him to score against us and no one else.

Lets be fair, we've done brilliantly to be where we are and the results on Saturday don't finish anything, we have 10 games to go, a total of 30 points up for grabs and every team in the league is fighting for something. No one can look at that United squad and think they'll push on and not drop more points before the end of the season. (granted, other teams will be saying that about us too) If we don't win the league, then its not a failure over the whole season, we've been excellent and shown plenty to be optimistic about and we'll ideally use whatever prize money and generated income from a vastly increased support to push on again next season. We didn't expect to be here when it all kicked off, lets just enjoy the final push and see what happens.

Na, £24 as per usual for this one.

I for one have really enjoyed watching football there this season In all seriousness, surprised at the Dunfermline home record, 8 defeats is crazy and of course not sustainable. Is it down to the injuries alone?

I don't disagree with you, the confidence isn't there, but I think a lot of that is borne out of the system and the pressure it puts our defence under more often than not too. 10 games to go, we're not out of this at all, we are arguably much further on than most people probably expected, certainly at the start of the season we would have been happy with fourth. Got to regroup and push on.

We are challenging at the top end of the league and for promotion with Dabrowski though. Let's not forget the number of points he's gained or retained for us all season with some fantastic performances, specifically against Dundee United in the last two games against them. Yesterday highlighted some of the worst defending we've had in a while. Every clearance was either lumped back to Arbroath or mistimed and dropped at an Arbroath foot because they were mobile while we stood around and watched. Tired of watching Murray try and make every header he gets be a contender for longest distance covered when there are options around him for a controlled touch instead. Brown was a shocker at the back last night, as was the other one too. Being a midfielder in defence is no excuse for not doing the basics properly, that's not something unique to a "by trade" defender. The absolute lack of composure under pressure was ridiculous, it was a case of "get the ball away from me, someone else can deal with it" which for a team at any professional level is weak. Watson is the voice of reason in there and it's very visible when he's not around. Our defensive unit is a mess, but it's further compounded by a poor midfield unit that is stretched because of our setup. Far too much space in the middle of the park again and Matthews was hindered early on by a soft booking which meant he couldn't put himself about as much as needed.

Absolutely rotten performance for the majority of the second half from the whole team. Played into Arbroaths hands, never fought for anything, didn't defend our area, let them pick up every second ball and resorted to long punts into the wind. Poor from everyone out there. Lost count of how many times we watched a ball bounce before attempting to attack it and regularly just headered it back to an Arbroath player. Their second goal was criminal, weak tackles in the middle of the park, let them cross without any pressure and Kev stood and watched the ball. Everyone, including all the players could see the ball was holding up in the air from that side, yet no one did anything about it. The manner of our defeats this season highlight a weak mentality under pressure. Not sure how we fix that in the last 10 games.

Some of the worst defending I've ever seen in that game. Awful.

If the weather is as poor as forecasted, i'm not sure Easton on a wet and sticky surface is going to be a good thing. If it was our surface, i'd be good with it.

Really nice looking site. Well done to all. Also, whoever updated fanbase today, nicely done

Not sure how often Fanbase gets updated as it still has Hospitality for the Airdrie game on 23rd March which isn't taking place and has the Arbroath hospitality down for 3pm kick off on Friday 3rd May.

Yep, and its here that our direct approach may fail us as they'll be fine with defending their box. We need to be able to draw them out and capitalise on any spaces we can get. This could just be one of those turgid games.

We have to do better on Friday night against another team who have a good physical presence and can play to their strengths on their day. They'll also be looking to recover quickly from their Hampden pumping so, in typical Rovers fashion, I can see Arbroath playing out of their skins and we'll have to be good to match them. Last night we created absolutely nothing in the second half, not even a single shot. We spent the game aiming for the head of Hamilton and then Rudden and Vaughan, played right into the hands (heads) of Mortons backline who will deal with that every time. Connolly quite probably had his worst game this season, he just looks devoid of form and confidence, a shadow of last seasons player. Hopefully he can find some form in the last part of the season.

Sorry, remind me the last time you were top 12 to even have that as a baseline expectation. You need to take incremental steps to progress. Otherwise you've already failed the target for this season.