SCOTTISH CUP 3RD RND REPLAY - Match Preview

The East Fife regulars are forced to settle for Scotsport SPHell after the move to purchase SKY was rejected.

We can all be thankful for that fact at least. I mean, how badly did you want another shot at the Icelandic puffin-munchers after the humiliation that night in Perth?! The arrival of tomorrow night’s Scottish Cup Third Round replay against Third Division East Fife comes as something of a reprieve for the Pars with the memory of that appallingly flat performance against Jim Moffat’s men still fresh in the mind – not to mention the unpleasant memory of walking through the wretched ghost-town which they call ‘Methil’, which still provokes many a nightmare! With a money-spinning televised home tie against holders Celtic awaiting the victors in the next round, tomorrow night’s replay may well bring added significance to two clubs who – let’s face it – aren’t exactly raking in the millions, christ, East Fife can’t even afford to pay for SKY TV in their bar – by the way, rumours that Jimmy Calderwood is looking to tie up our SKY plus package in a January transfer window deal are, I’m told, totally unfounded!

After the mayhem at Methil and the non-performance at Castle Greyskull on Saturday, you’d have thought any right-thinking manager would be compelled to make drastic changes in his first-team selection. But you see, such is the injury crisis at East End these days, the only changes Davie Hay and his coaching staff can make nowadays are to their match-day gear. Yes another week has passed by and yet another player has picked up an injury. This time it’s the turn of quick-learner Lee Makel to miss out through a leg injury. Bloody hell, that’s not bad by anyone’s standards! The guy’s only been here a couple of weeks and already he’s settled into the way of things at East End. With the entire Pars injury list unlikely to make tomorrow night’s starting lineup, Davie Hay’s options for his starting eleven seems to be drifting into the ridiculous category. It’s getting so bad now that we might have to call on the playing services of Big Jim Leishman and Craig ‘Robbo’ Robertson before long – even with the two ‘old-timers’ I’m sure the Pars first-team average age would still be somewhat lower than Martin O’Neill’s old folks club! We can laugh and joke about getting the likes of Leishman and Robertson back playing, but let’s hope the situation doesn’t get so drastic that we have to call on the services of ex-player Sean Kilgannon!

Having said that, whatever team Davie Hay puts out for the Pars we should – in all truth – be able to take apart a very poor, albeit feisty, East Fife side. Fair enough the thirds division side fought and battled like their lives depended on it last Saturday, but how utter dross were they?! I’m sure their amount of misplaced of passes reached treble figures, and I’m not talking about the passes which were carried away by an offer-enthusiastic wind. And the moment when one of their players bombed down the wing with the ball about twenty paces behind him was just pure comedy genius! Yet had it not been for a wonder save from Derek Stillie then this ‘dross team’ would have been celebrating all the way to a SKY TV-purchasing tie against Celtic. With East Fife reportedly set to take around 700 fans – that’s almost seven times the amount of fans we (an SPL side) managed to usher through to weegieland on Saturday! – with them through to East End, a full-scale Fife heavyweight bout looks set to take place.

So, with the bottle of Jack Daniels and the anti-depressant tablets at the ready, I await the outcome of what could yet prove to be yet another downright humiliatingly embarrassingly shockingly poor performance. Losing to Livingston…that was bad! Losing to Hafnarfjordur… that was very bad! Drawing with East Fife…that was so piss-poor it was hard to believe! But losing to East Fife at East End? Now that doesn’t even bear thinking about!!!