Harry Cairney's first home game in charge ended in a 0-0 draw today.
Arbroath lined up with Inglis, Flyer, Rennie, McLeod, Bishop, Cusi, MacDonald, Farqy, Henslee and Swankie. On the bench were Beith, McLean, Cook, McAuley and Timmy Woodcock.
Arbroath started the game attacking the Switchie end with a strong wind against them. Arbroath used the wind to their advantage though and should have been up at Half Time.
Although having only 2-3 shots on goal, the oppertunity's Arbroath had were very good ones. First of all, with around 20 minutes gone we had our first clearcut chance. MacDonald won the ball firmly on the right touchline and played a good ball to Flyer. He then took on the full back and whipped in a great cross to the feet off Greg Henslee but Henner decided to take a touch and the centre back took the ball of his toes before he could shoot. The 2nd chance was made out of nothing by Paul Farquharson. Farqy picked the ball up about 20 yards from goal and turned and shot brilliantly. The ball looked goalward, but sadly missed the goal by what must have been milimetres!
Overall the first half was quite quiet with Ayr causing our defence no problems. Good news at Half Time was that there were 2 shops open! This should definately be the case every week as this easily makes the club more money.
The 2nd half started in similar fashion to the 1st. Ayr were good for a 5-10 minute spell in the middle of the half but apart from that didn't seem to bother Arbroath at all. Chance after chance came and went and it was dissapointing to finish the 90 minutes without scoring at least 1 goal. We had 5-6 chances in the 2nd half but the finishing let us down really. Hillcoat, in the Ayr goal, had an awful time with his kicking and almost every oppertunity for Arbroath came from him not being able to clear the ball out of the Ayr half. Near the end Arbroath probabaly had their best chances of the match. On around 85 minutes John Cusick had a good header go just over from just inside the 6 yard box from a good cross from Flyer. Farqy had a good free kick a few minutes later tipped over well by John Hillocat.
Overall this was a very encouraging Arbroath performance and hopefully we can continue this sort of display into the next 2 crunch games against Berwick and Alloa. After today I actually will travel to Berwick with hope rather than dread as I was feeling last week.