Up For The Cup

It was a beautiful day today as we headed to Stirling for our Scottish Cup second round tie against Stirling Albion. We are a Scottish Lowland League club and Stirling Albion are a Scottish League 2 club, so you could imagine we were going to be in for a very tough game.

Cheryl, Gavin, my Father-in-law and I arrived at the ground at 2pm and we went up into the Albion Social Club before the match for a couple of beers. Then at 3pm we were in our seats in the stand and ready for kick off.

Our team, Whitehill Welfare started very brightly and they looked a lot better than our stronger opponents and all the hard work paid off in the 26th minute when our striker Wayne McIntosh headed the ball into the far corner from an Andrew Kidd corner. This sparked Stirling into life and nine minutes later they won a free kick on the edge of the box and their player curled it high into the top right hand corner to make it 1-1.

At half time Cheryl went for the pies for Gavin and I, they were absolutely beautiful. Steak with runny gravy, hmmmm delicious. Gavin almost choked on his pie as 4 minutes into the second half Stirling scored, their Centre Forward latching onto a loose ball ran in on goal and despatched the ball into the net. We were hanging on in the game until about 20 mins after that, our goal keeper making a number of stunning saves then with 10 mins left Dane Robertson latched onto a pass back and passed the ball across the goals where Stevie Manson was waiting gleefully at the back post to tap it into the net. At this time I was off my seat running from the disabled section of the stand towards the dug out section with my arms in the air and screaming in delight. The Stirling Albion fans must have thought there was a bee in my underpants or something as I jigged along. The look on Gavin's face was priceless as he was roaring yeeeeeeeeeeh.

In the final minute our Centre Half was tripped in the box and we all shouted for the penalty but alas the referee waved play on, so the game finished 2-2 as the final whistle blew and our players walked off to a standing ovation from the fans. So we will have to go through it all again next week at Rosewell when we play them in the replay. Let's hope it is just as much an exciting game as it was today.

The blip today is an action shot taken during the first half. The Stirling player is playing the ball wide with our captain looking on. If you are confused, we are the team in Claret and Sky Blue. On the journey home, Gavin said to me "Dad those last 5 mins of that game were just too long, I don't know if I could ever handle it again."

So it's a big pat on the back today for all our players who were certainly up for the cup.