FOOTBALL highs don't tend to linger too long. Ask Mark Howard. The goalkeeper had been handed a start in midweek after St Mirren's first choice Chris Smith was taken to hospital with a mystery virus and had pulled off the kind of saves which not only
earned rave reviews but also won his team a place in the Scottish Cup quarter-finals.
Yesterday, the smiles were wiped off faces as he gifted Falkirk one goal and can consider himself culpable for another as the home side went on to rack up four goals in an emphatic victory which moved them up the league table into fifth place.
"Hero to villain, it happens so quickly in football," the keeper who had actually been on loan to Falkirk last season lamented afterwards. "I've apologised to the team because we felt we had a good chance to get back into the game at 1-0 down, so it came at a bad time."
By the time he had his three minutes of madness, the home side were already a goal to the good but struggling to convert their superior possession and greater strength into something more tangible, and were only too happy with his intervention.
In his programme notes Falkirk manager John Hughes looked back on his team's performance at Ibrox last week and bemoaned the lack of penetration and despite taking an early lead courtesy of Scott Arfield, the way the remainder of the first half panned out, he will have had much the same complaint in the dressing room at half time. The team with the majority of the possession, they had rarely tested Howard, something which began to look even more remiss the longer the second half progressed.
St Mirren had managed to carve out a couple of chances, through Andy Dorman midway through the first half and Hugh Murray in the 56th minute, when the ball broke to him on the edge of the area and he blazed it over. That was to prove the most crucial miss as Falkirk broke upfield. In the 58th minute Jack Ross and Carl Finnigan combined down the right flank before the ball was delivered in to the central area for Arfield and while the midfielder struck it well the keeper did seem to have it covered but allowed it to slip by him, spewing up and over him into the back of his net.
Three minutes later, he had further cause for embarrassment. This time he attempted to punch the ball clear of the danger area but failed to get any distance and Patrick Cregg was a grateful recipient as he buried the ball, with the keeper still grounded.
The same midfielder was on the scoresheet again in the 71st minute and it was a lovely take, a nice stepover and then left-foot finish curled into the keeper's top right corner, a goal his manager claimed he has been practising on the training ground.
It was a welcome victory for Falkirk who had gone into the game without a win in the past six matches but with Aberdeen accounting for two of those matches and the Old Firm the opposition in the last two Premier League outings there was no sense of doom and gloom loitering in the corridors around Falkirk Stadium, especially as the recent head-to-head with St Mirren had proved so profitable, handing them five goals as well as the three points. On the back of their midweek defeat of Dundee United to earn a place in the quarter final of the Scottish Cup there was, however, the feeling that St Mirren could make life tougher for Falkirk this time out. They might have done had it not been for Howard.
Rugby on pitch is killing our passing game, moans HughesFALKIRK manager John Hughes has hit out at the decision to allow rugby to be played at the Falkirk Stadium, claiming that it could cost his side points and revenue when it comes to final league standings.
"I have to say I don't know who it is that brings rugby to my stadium but they are absolutely killing my team. For our style of play we need a right slick surface and that pitch is absolutely killing us and I'm asking the powers that be to sit down and sort something out."
The stadium was the venue for the recent Scotland Under-20 match against France and with another match scheduled for March 7, against England, Hughes is angry that his team's passing game is being affected and when asked if he thought it would cost his side points he said he feared it could.
"For us to go and play real slick football, we need my surface to be at its best. We won surface of the year last year but this is the first time I've been back at the stadium for two weeks and it's not conducive to our style of play. Something needs to be done about it. I'm serious. I'm standing up for my players who are peeved about it. They go out there, try to get the ball moving, try to pass it and when the surface is like that they have to take an extra touch, can't get from A to B as quickly as we want and the truth is my training pitches are better than that.
"I'm basically crying out for help here to my board of directors to try and make sure we get that surface that allows us to go and play our football. I'm not against rugby but why don't they go play it on a rugby pitch? They don't need to play it at my stadium. The groundsman and his team can only do so much. If he puts sprinkler systems on it or rolls it, it turns into mud and it's causing him real problems."
But Hughes, whose side still won 4-0 yesterday despite the pitch conditions, said changing their style of play to accommodate the bad bounces is not even a option. "We tried to change our style of play against Gretna at Motherwell a couple of weeks ago and Gretna fully deserved to beat us because it didn't suit us and afterwards we sat down to analyse it and between the staff we agreed that if we are going to get beat, we will get beat playing our style. It's like anything else, if you play golf, you can't putt on winter greens. If you putt on summer greens then you know you get a true run of the ball and it's the same out there."
The full article contains 1125 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
