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WYNESS101

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Positive from the match tonight must be that Garry Warren played for an hour and was steady and reliable throughout although he did seem to be limping slightly as he left the pitch. Gavin Morrison also gave a steady performance and could easily have scored a couple. While Jason Oswell was lively thoughout the match he missed a couple of golden chances and both Nick Ross and Martin Laing also had a good opportunity to score. Calum Ferguson came on towards the end and looked very lively.

The worrying aspect in my opinion was the amou8nt of misplaced passes through out the match.

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Glad Warren got an hour. He will be excellent for us this season. We know the problem will be up front and proven SPL standard forwards command a wage a lot higher than we can offer at the moment unfortunately. We saw enough in the Coventry game to see we have the makings of a team but we aren't suddenly going to be top 6 after a good pre-season performance, neither will Ross County after beating a weakened Elgin team either.

I am looking forward to our best 11 being available at the start of the season and hopefully a good team spirit will see us getting off to a good start. Nice leveller these last two games, keeps our expectations reasonable but hopeful of some decent football too.

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It all sounds a bit worrying. An SPL side should be able to pick the weakest XI from the squad and beat a team like Wick comfortably. Is this season going to be like last season - riddled with inconsistency? I know you can't read too much into these pre-season games and the diddy teams are all pumped up when playing a bigger side, but all the same, anything less than a comfortable 3 or 4 goal stroll in the park is not good. At least the Coventry game shows we can compete at a higher level so lets just keep the fingers crossed that players can stay fit and we can get a bit of consistency in the side. Players need this if they are to play as a team and develop the confidence that is required in front of goal.

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It all sounds a bit worrying. An SPL side should be able to pick the weakest XI from the squad and beat a team like Wick comfortably. Is this season going to be like last season - riddled with inconsistency? I know you can't read too much into these pre-season games and the diddy teams are all pumped up when playing a bigger side, but all the same, anything less than a comfortable 3 or 4 goal stroll in the park is not good. At least the Coventry game shows we can compete at a higher level so lets just keep the fingers crossed that players can stay fit and we can get a bit of consistency in the side. Players need this if they are to play as a team and develop the confidence that is required in front of goal.

Do we not remember being "diddly"teams playing friendliest against big teams and getting results? Certainly Thistles 3 all draw with Celtic or 2 all draw with Rangers come to mind for me. Both teams had around 6 or 7 first team players who were also internationals. Our lot tonight were nowhere near that standard so no concerned about the results at all. Judgement can only be made against SPL teams.

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Looking forward to a Smileymometer from Oddquine. :furtive:

Dream on, IHE! :rotflmao:

I don't know enough about tactics to have an opinion about game play. As long as the players are trying hard, are sweating buckets at the end of the game and mostly kick the ball in the right direction, mostly to a player in the same colour of strip and there are goal attempts, even if there are no goals, I'm a happy bunny! But then I'm easily pleased.....if I wasn't, I'd not have married a man (or support the Scottish Football Team). cheeky4.gif

Allowing for the fact, that, apart from a couple of times, most of what I've watched has been against Wick in Wick, and mostly a predominantly u-19 side, and all the matches have been, in my uneducated opinion, decent to watch and mostly pretty even, this one wasn't a lot different bar no goals. Watched one loss, one win and a draw in the last three games...and I think that the results on the day were fair.....even if we are an "SPL" side with delusions of superiority.

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Calm down ladies, look at it, it's a per season, friendly, working on match fitness, trying new things, we didn't have a"leader" on the field, and mostly young lads.. we don't need to go out and pump the wee teams after all and we had a clean sheet.....

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Anyone willing to give a short match report :wink:?

Could give you a really long one (Oddquine's verbosity rules) but it wouldn't really tell you anything.

If you don't see a game for yourself, the opinion of another person is only as good as your knowledge of the person and your implicit belief in their ability to know what they are talking about. Two people can read a game in completely different ways, particularly depending on their expectations. Check the Brechin thread....ymip said .pretty dire stuff from start to finish Alex Macleod said We played some good football again. Two people.....two perceptions! And the one you are going to go with would kinda depend on your own prevailing level of optimism/pessimism.

Given that the team was mostly made up of those who might sit on the bench for most of the season, bar injuries/emergencies.....it doesn't really tell you much about how things are going first team-wise. Nothing in the game was worth writing home about in excitement, really...but equally nothing in it would justify filling a glass with vodka and downing a bottle of sleeping pills. It was what it was...a team of predominantly u-19s against a team of mainly men up to ten years older...more mature physically and who have mostly played together for a few seasons.

Report here http://www.wick-acad...d=1218&Itemid=2 ! :smile:..... from the Wick POV.

Edited by Oddquine
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I think that's a pretty decent result. Wick are a good HL team now finishing 8th last season. 9 of our 13 players involved were teenagers. While a win would have been great I'm not complaining at all.

Incidentally I see Wick are playing Raith Rovers in the first round of the Challenge Cup on Saturday. How come?

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Incidentally I see Wick are playing Raith Rovers in the first round of the Challenge Cup on Saturday. How come?

Presumably a team was needed to even up the numbers in the North section of the draw? Raith fans have been told to go to a shoe shop in Wick to buy their match tickets before going to the ground, to reduce queues at the turnstiles.

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I think that's a pretty decent result. Wick are a good HL team now finishing 8th last season. 9 of our 13 players involved were teenagers. While a win would have been great I'm not complaining at all.

Incidentally I see Wick are playing Raith Rovers in the first round of the Challenge Cup on Saturday. How come?

There's always 2 northern teams from the hl in the challenge cup these days, not quite sure how they decide who though.
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Seemingly for the last two seasons the places have gone to the top two placed Highland League teams with a valid SFA club license....allegedly.... :rules02:

From wikithicki....

The 2012–13 Scottish Challenge Cup, known as the Ramsdens Challenge Cup due to sponsorship reasons with Ramsdens, will be the 22nd season of the competition. It will be competed for by 32 clubs, which includes the 30 members of the Scottish Football League, and for the second season running, the top two Highland Football League clubs with a valid SFA club license.

Inverurie Loco Works who finished fourth and Wick Academy eighth of the Highland Football League qualified for the competition for the first time after being asked to compete following their work in the SFA's Club Licensing programme. Clubs ranked higher such as Forres Mechanics are not compliant with the programme so the qualification spot moved to a lower ranked club. Buckie Thistle and Deveronvale were ruled out due to being invited to last season's competition.

Edited by Tichy_Blacks_Back
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Think I heard there's a closed doors game against Rangers on Saturday

Brora Rangers

That would have been a good game to see with Brora being the big spenders this season in the highland league. Could have seen some ex-players Dale Gilliespie, Andrew Greig, Richie Hart and Stuart Golabek (who has being appointed assisted manager)

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If I remember rightly at 10, though I'm not guaranteeing that.

Edited to say....Checked my memory (forgot I had the paper), and if the Groat does listing starting squads from 1 to 11, then he was 10.

Report here http://www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk/Sport/Football/Inverness-Caley-Jags-held-to-a-draw-by-Academy-25072012.htm

Edited by Oddquine
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He was playing number 10 and seemed to me to be just behind Oswell with Liam Polworth on one side of the midfield going forward and Kyle Whyte on the other.

Polworth seemed to be scrapping for everything and even though he lost the ball a couple of times he would be straight in to try and get it back, which he often did.

Warren was vocal at the back and keeping everyone going, and I heard Reguero's English improving, he knows "keeper" and "man-on" at least and was loud with it.

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He was playing number 10 and seemed to me to be just behind Oswell with Liam Polworth on one side of the midfield going forward and Kyle Whyte on the other.

Polworth seemed to be scrapping for everything and even though he lost the ball a couple of times he would be straight in to try and get it back, which he often did.

Warren was vocal at the back and keeping everyone going, and I heard Reguero's English improving, he knows "keeper" and "man-on" at least and was loud with it.

Now that is an example of the reason I go whut.gif and nogetit.gif when I read match reports and team selections on this forum. My regular fitba supporting was in the days when you knew exactly to what position a number equated....and you could even reasonably work out who they were meant to be marking/kicking the crap out of..

Oswell was 9...so how come Ross was playing behind him? And where has the front line gone? In my day, the midfield was numbers 4-6...and 7-11 were forwards. The only hole was the one the manager kicked the first person to be sent off into before urinating on him. Maybe why fitba was much better fun.

Anyone care to do me an idiot's guide as to interpretation of current fitba thinking (if such a description is not dignifying it overly) so I can at least visualise what is being talked about.

And pretty please, IHE...don't you bother responding, because I am already completely muddled..and your interpretation of just about everything makes me go sigh.gif and dunno.gif.

Edited by Oddquine
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And here was me thinking that Renegade may be Terry Butcher and it has been Oddquine all the time.

Goalkeepers playing as sweepers, overlapping full backs, interchanging centre backs, three at the back, wide interchanging midfielders, defensive midfielders "in the hole" between defence and midfield, creative midfielders, two defensive midfielders allowing width, interchanging wingers, the old fashioned holding centre forward with a pacy sidekick or somebody "in the hole" between midfield and attack etc., etc.

Oswell is pretty much a number 9 at the moment but not in the traditional role. If he beefs up he could well be but I suspect that his pace will make him a sidekick. Sounds like Nick Ross was played more in the style of the inside right of yesteryear. I would prefer him to be a right half or a combination of a right half/right winger.

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Is the Quine even aulder than she lets on? Even around 1969 I can remember Celtic's 4-2-4 lining up against rangers 4-3-3. and that made rangers a defensive team.

Nowadays even one striker is sometimes considered a luxury......

If you watch an old game from the 50s two things strike you:

The keepers were terrible and the pace was really slow. Teams didn't appear too bothered if they lost the ball, whereas nowadays it's a massive sin.

Nowadays players have to be athletes which means carrying out the same skills twice as quickly. So full backs have to be wing backs which means a 5-4-1 can quickly become a 3-4-3 etc. Teams are far better organised so it's relatively easy for a mediocre team to keep a clean sheet against a good side - the onus is on the better side to break them down. Inevitably football evolves to become more defensive - I wonder if this is the case in all similar sports and I suspect it is. Private Fraser was right.

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England 2 Scotland 3 - Wembley 1967 :

It was a day when Scotland showed the Auld Enemy how the game should be played. The truth, though, is far less inspirational.

In a game played at times at walking pace and in relative silence, with not one booking, Scotland beat an England side who played the majority of the game effectively with 10 men. Lanky stopper Jack Charlton was injured after only 15 minutes in a challenge with Lennox and with no substitutes allowed in those days, he was thrown up front simply for nuisance value, hobbling around in comical fashion for the rest of the afternoon.

Indeed, in his autobiography, Greaves claims England had only nine fit men after Ray Wilson was caught by Bremner but although that can be put down to sour grapes by the Spurs legend, there can be no doubt that Charlton's injury changed the whole complexion of the game. Had Scotland been organised enough to play any sort of offside trap then Charlton would have been a hindrance. He could barely walk. As it was, from a static position the former Leeds United defender scored once and was unlucky not to notch at least one other.

In Tommy Gemmell's autobiography, he claimed England were "massively outclassed" and that "Baxter was the main man. I can't remember him misplacing a pass all day." Nonsense.

Baxter had an indifferent game to say the least, missing the target with passes as often as he found them and indeed he might have been sent off in the first half for twice handling the ball, had the modern application of rules applied back then.

Although far from his best, it was Bobby Charlton who was head and shoulders above everyone on the park, especially in the first half. The Manchester United star showed he had it all; power, strength, change of pace, comfortable on either foot, a full range of passing, and carrying a goal threat every time he moved forward.

Baxter was not even the best Scottish player on the day, Wallace, McCalliog, McKinnon and Greig all performing better. Indeed, in his book, Bobby Charlton agreed that Baxter had played better four years previously when 10-man Scotland had won 2-1.

Gemmell's claim that there were no tactics as such is much more credible. Aside from the lack of offside nous on show, the match is so far removed from the modern game as to be almost unrecognisable.

Play is stretched from the first minute until the last. Seconds after kick-off there are three Scotland players in front of Law, who attempts to go straight at the England defence. Nowadays it takes an hour for three Scotland players to get ahead of the ball.

Both teams lined up 4-3-3 but players roamed around the park at will. Law, ostensibly centre forward, plays wide on the right, wide on the left, left-back, right back and all over midfield, sometimes, it seems, in the same move.

There was no real thought given to defending, even by England when they had to reshuffle after the early injury to Charlton senior. Stiles simply dropped back to help out Bobby Moore. For all his reputation as a dour tactician, Sir Alf Ramsay's side went all out to get the win.

Players have acres of space and plenty of time, often allowed to amble over the halfway line untroubled which suited Baxter. There was no 'pressing game,' no tight marking, no hugging and tugging which led to among other things, plenty of free headers in the box.

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Is the Quine even aulder than she lets on? Even around 1969 I can remember Celtic's 4-2-4 lining up against rangers 4-3-3. and that made rangers a defensive team.

Nowadays even one striker is sometimes considered a luxury......

If you watch an old game from the 50s two things strike you:

The keepers were terrible and the pace was really slow. Teams didn't appear too bothered if they lost the ball, whereas nowadays it's a massive sin.

Nowadays players have to be athletes which means carrying out the same skills twice as quickly. So full backs have to be wing backs which means a 5-4-1 can quickly become a 3-4-3 etc. Teams are far better organised so it's relatively easy for a mediocre team to keep a clean sheet against a good side - the onus is on the better side to break them down. Inevitably football evolves to become more defensive - I wonder if this is the case in all similar sports and I suspect it is. Private Fraser was right.

Nope......I am as old as I say I am..which is three months too young to get pensioners rates for a season ticket this season. Tbh by that late in the sixties, I likely wasn't about to be pushing a pram with a wee cheil and all essential accoutrements in it down to the local Highland League Ground...so am probably remembering more the later 1950s and earlier 1960s. I do kinda remember the Celtic game as being my first and and my attendance started to reduce after the North of Scotland Cup winning game in 1966-67 and eventually petered out almost completely. So I'd guess my mindset is fixed in those years because that was when it was most real to me.

But maybe it's too late to learn.......beginning to think it is from yours and IHE's posts. And maybe it would spoil my enjoyment of a game if I was watching it from any level of critical knowledge.

After all.look at how much I pontificate while knowing nothing about football......could you all hack my increase in posts if I started thinking I did know something. :lol:

Edited by Oddquine
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