killie.net: It's been a long time....

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

It's been a long time....

Christ, bang goes all my hard work - and just when I thought that I could get into the flow of this. Since my last post all those weeks ago Killie have plumbed the depths and recovered to just about get their head above water. It went something like this...

Going to East End Park back in November dreaming of another 6-0 win was something of a mistake (we got humped 4-1). The only plus point was the enjoyment of taking my son to his first away game. His tears did threaten to get out of hand when the Pars hit their fourth. I could have cried myself. Wales hit the consolation strike. We headed into the home match with Ferranti Thistle thinking the defeat in Fife was a blip. A minor stumble. Blame it on the plastic. This turned out to be far from the truth as the the 3-1 defeat to a - then managerless - Livi and ensuing dark weeks demonstrated. Consolation this time was provided by Johnston.

Talk leading up to the Aberdeen match at Pitoddrie in early December was all about "making amends" and putting on a "fighting performance". We did actually play pretty well. Hell, we even led twice (the second a wonder free-kick from Peter Leven), but some comedy goalkeeping amongst other things saw us head back down the road dodging the speed cams on the back of a 3-2 reverse. That's three defeats on the bounce and 10 goals conceded if you're counting. A week later and it's Tannadice. We always win there and Ian McCall's coat is on the shoogliest of pegs. Time to get back to winning ways. We got beat 3-0. To say we were pish in this game doesn't begin to explain. 4 defeats, 13 goals.

Next up it's Rangers at Rugby Park. Hardly the best fixture to halt your losing streak but, hey, Rangers are shit this season so optimism abounds. Like so often in these games, however, we play well - and Rangers are indeed shit - but not well enough. We're even shitter and lose 1-0. That's five in a row. Word on the street now is that the shoogley peg now has oor Jim's parka on it.

In retrospect we just had to win the games against Dundee and Caley Thistle, so the 3-1 (Invincible, Ford, Boyd) and 2-0 (Invincible brace) wins weren't that surprising in the grand scheme of things. Football's a bit like that isn't it? The fact that we won them with a bit to spare - especially at Pitoddrie - was surprising and just a little bit frustrating considering the dross we had watched in the previous 5 outings. But a corner turned and the screws tightened on Jim's coat-hook.

With the team now on a bit of a roll, we approached the Cup and league double-header against Motherwell (both at RP) with great optimism. To win both games 2-0 (McDonald, Boyd then Boyd double) was a tremendous achievement and beyond the expectations of most Killie fans. We now had a run of 4 wins on the bounce with 3 clean sheets!!

It couldn't last, of course, and things have returned to earth with a bump in the last couple of games. The 3-0 defeat at Easter Road was pretty hard to take as we've already dumped Hibs twice this season. In the end, despite creating some decent openings, a hat-trick by boy-of-the-moment Riordan royally undid us. The 1-0 reverse to Celtic last weekend brings us up to date in predictable style. A decent performance - with on-loan Liam Fontaine from Fulham making his debut - but we surrendered pretty meekly despite a penalty from Sutton being the only difference between the sides.

So it's been a mixed couple of months. Inconsistency in selection, particularly due to injuries at the back, have contributed greatly to the flaky results, but we go into Saturday's fourth round Cup tie at Tynecastle in good heart (no pun intended). The signs are that we'll be filling most of the Roseburn stand in blue and white so here's hoping we've got something to sing about by 10 to 5. As I write this Hearts have just been beaten in the CIS Cup semi by Motherwell (3-2 AET). Whether this makes our job harder on Saturday remains to be seen...

¶ 10:47 PM

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