DUMBARTON 3 SHIRE 1

Apart from a solitary Stirlingshire Cup tie, Shire have never won at the Strathclyde Homes Stadium and they did not look like breaking that duck on their latest visit.

After falling behind to Brian McPhee's 11th minute goal the team fell apart and, by the conclusion of a match to forget, were lucky they had not lost by an even greater margin.

Gordon Wylde named the same starting eleven, and the same substitutes, who had comprehensively beaten Elgin City at Firs Park just three days previously but they could not scale the same heights again so quickly.

It might have been a different story had the linesman seen Dumbarton's Chris Gentile handle the ball inside the box after just four minutes as Joe Savage atempted to flick it over him. But the Shire shouts for a penalty were waved away.

Seven minutes later Fergus Tiernan hit a hopeful long ball out of defence which Carl Thywissen, on his own 18 yard line should have cleared. But the Shire defender mis-judged the bounce and McPhee compounded his error by collecting the ball to shoot Dumbarton in front.

Some nice work by McPhee on the by-line resulted in a cross for which there were no takers when any in-rushing Dumbarton player would have scored easily.

With 25 minutes on the clock Dumbarton should have gone 2-0 up when Tiernan was played in by McQuilken. But despite only having Shire keeper Michael Brown to beat the Sons man shot weakly at  his legs.

A minute later Shire spurned a great chance to level when Savage's header from a Craig Donaldson corner kick hit the crossbar. It was Shire's only real chance in the first half.

The visiting fans were simply hoping their team could hang on until half-time without conceding another but that was a vain hope. Two minutes from the break Campbell was fouled on the edge of the box and Andy Geggan struck the resulting free-kick off the defensive wall and into the net.

Within five minutes of the re-start McPhee was left all on his own to race into the penalty box and it was fortunate a combination of Brown and Paul Doyle was enough to put him off and the ball went wide. The veteran striker's pleas for a penalty went unheeded.

Dumbarton's McQuilken had the ball in the back of the net not long after but the linesman claimed Tiernan, who had supplied the cross, had let the ball run out of play beforehand.

Just after the hour mark Shire had a lifeline. Savage played Marc McKenzie in behind the Dumbarton defence and he crossed for Andrew Brand to head home from inside the six yard box.

Craig Donaldson was then booked after he went down inside the penalty box under a challenge from Sons' keeper David Crawford, referee Alan Boyd was of the opinion he had dived to try and win a spot kick.

McPhee was coming closer and was unlucky not to add to his tally with a header that came back off the inside of the post and into the grateful arms of Brown.

It was looking more and more like Shire would claim an unlikely point as their pressure reached its zenith, but all the good work was undone late on.

Scott Gibb, instead of sheperding the ball back to Brown, stopped playing after hearing a whistle from the crowd. That allowed Sons' substitute Chris Hamilton to steal in and take the ball round Brown before planting it into the empty net.

Dumbarton : Crawford, Geggan, Russell, Gentile, O'Byrne, Tiernan, Henderson, Potter, McPhee, McQuilken(Hamilton 65), Campbell.

Shire : Brown, Gibb, Oates(K. McBride 69), Doyle, Thywissen, Brownlie(Kelly 56), McKenzie(Simpson 82), Brand, Savage, Donaldson, Ure.

Referee : A.Boyd

Attendance : 303.

 

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