St.Mirren v Hibernian
It's a noon start for the drive over to Paisley for the 2.15pm kick. We arrive at the newish St.Mirren park, situated a mere 300 yards from their old ground, Love Street, at about 1.15ish. We chill out in the car reading the Sunday Mail - that quality non-old firm biased paper. I normally like to spend time reading the sports section but can't stand the thought of reading about yesterdays game so I don't bother. It's good of my dad then to show me the pictures of his team celebrating their winning goal.
They've got a strange set up at St.Mirren whereby you need to buy a ticket before you get to the turnstiles. It's nice to see that my dad doesn't have to prove his age here. It's only once we're inside the ground that I realise we've forgotten to buy a programme. I approach one of the stewards on duty and ask if I can buy one in the ground, he kindly tells me that the programmes 'haven't been delivered yet but hopefully they'll turn up before kick off'.
We soften the blow by buying a pre-match pie. It's a disappointing affair with a soggy bottom, the worst SPL effort yet. No scratch that, at least they offered something unlike their opponents today.
We go to take our seat in the ground - which only has a capacity of 8,006 by the way and as my dad said 'it looks like it's made of Lego' - and find seat N 18 to be covered in pigeon poo. Some people say it's lucky to get splatted with this but we're taking no chances and sit elsewhere.
Looking round the ground we can see a few large flags up behind one of the goals in the St.Mirren end, one catches our eyes however. There's a Leeds branch of St.Mirren supporters, that's about a 450 mile round trip and pure dedication.
Thankfully the programmes have arrived and I buy one and on flicking through the pages see that there are four mascots at the game today, three for the home team and one for the away team. The youngest of which is only one and a half years old and, according to the programme, her favourite player is Garry Brady. During the warm up they all get introduced to the ground - ain't that sweet.
Whilst some of the Hibs players are still warming up the sprinklers come on and give them a pre-game soaking, seems a tad harsh.
After all this, the games pretty slow to get started but it's Hibs who are first to threaten from a Riordan corner but Sol Bamba's header is high and wide. St.Mirren are next to threaten after ten minutes when after Bamba held back Wardlaw, McAusland tries a speactacular effort from almost on the touchline.
Both sets of fans are in fine voice, but for some bizarre reason they've still got the P.A. system on. Eventually they realise and turn it off. Hibs have most of the chances in the first half and Riordan is unlucky to see his free kick float over the wall and just wide of the post. The ball rubs along the outside of the net and from where the Hibs fans are sitting they think it's gone in and start to celebrate, only to be shouted back down by the laughing home fans. Riordan has two further free kicks that are saved well by the keeper.
Wardlaw was then crunched twice in succession and both times the tackles went unpunished, much to the annoyance of the player, his team mates, the home fans and the Saints manager Danny Lennon, who's given a wee lecture from the fourth official and then the ref when he's still moaning. Minutes later he's even unhappier when Wardlaw gets booked for a wild kick at Bamba, 'revenge' stamped all over his challenge. The home fans are raging and give the ref a burst of 'You don't know what you're doing!'.
The game was still level at half time and we went for another pie. I'll have to cut down on the double pie ratio, it's not like I've got the six-pack stomach you see. We decide on moving seats as there wasn't much banter round about us in the previous half. We should have sat in the opposite stand as it's much more boisterous than the family stand we're currently in. It's a learning curve this trip you see, next time we won't make the same mistake.
The second half starts and it's clear to all there are still a few grudges as a result of first half challenges. Bamba and Wardlaw are the two main culprits, both of them show some good touches throughout the game though. Bamba is otherwise excellent at clearing his lines and has an eye for a good pass. Wardlaw plays the sort of Peter Crouch type of game, he's always flicking the ball on for others or holding the ball under pressure and waiting for team mates.
It's ultimately a challenge between these two that leads to the first goal. Bamba climbs all over the back of Wardlaw as they both go for a high ball on the half way line, yet again he escapes a booking. Brady takes the kick, it's flicked on and it falls to Craig Dargo, who makes no mistake and slots it home for St Mirren.
With half an hour there's still time for Hibs to come back into this. Nish goes close with a shot on the turn from a throw in, and Liam Miller hits the top of the roof with an effort that's not a cross or a shot. The Hibs fans are outraged to see that John Hughes solution to being a goal behind and with ten minutes to go is to sub their favourite player, Derek Roirdan. They then give him a louder burst of 'You don't know what your doing!!', they're braver than me having a pop at Yogi.
The game finishes one nil to the saints and this condemns Hibs to their second defeat of the season but lifts St.Mirren into the top half of the table. As I said previously, this is our third viewing of Hibs this season and at this rate they'll be phoning us and asking to stay away.
The Statistics
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