Written by John - OTR Saturday, 31 January 1998 00:00

Excitement. This match had tonnes of it (apart from the first 15 minutes which were crap). Although whether there was enough excitement to justify the 18 quid train ticket from Falkirk is debatable. I did get a complimentary match ticket from a benevolent Sons fan in Tuttie's Neuk so that did help reduce the overall cost !

Dumbarton's defensive frailities were exposed, once again, when Arbroath scored from a corner in the 17th minute. Our inability to defend these is now starting to be comical.

But going a goal down fired Dumbarton into life and some slick passing and movement lead to Alec Grace slotting away the equalizer a minute later. Happy with drawing level, Dumbarton then went to sleep. They allowed Arbroath's Burns to take the ball to the edge of the box where he unleashed an unstoppable shot past the statuesque Kenny Meechan.

Arbroath enjoyed a period of superiority and threatened on a couple of occasions. Meechan was alert to them all. Dumbarton do seem to take their time to get into games these days. They got into this one in the last ten minutes of the first half. In the final minute of the half, a Dumbarton free kick was headed towards goal. The Arbroath keeper managed to parry it but Jim Meechan was at hand to bring Dumbarton level again.

There wasn't much to report in the second half until the Martin Mooney incident. Mooney had been booked in the first half after a tackle on Arbroath's number 9, Thomson. There didn't appear to be much in the tackle and Thomson, a very wee but nippy midfielder who looked as if he was still at school, certainly made the most of it. In the second half, Mooney had been his tenacious self. In fact, we'd been saying that he'd end up getting sent off. Mooney jumped up with Thomson for a high ball and Thomson fell as if he'd been poleaxed. The referee saw it as a bookable offence and Mooney walked. From our vantage point there didn't seem anything wrong in the challenge but in the pub afterwards we heard that Mooney had lead with his elbow. In fact, we saw Thomson in the pub and had half a mind to give him some verbal but he was talking to the local sheriff so we didn't bother !

Down to ten men, Dumbarton had to do a fair bit of defending. Shots came from all angles, one smacked off the post, a few smacked off Kenny Meechan and one was blasted over the bar from less than 6 yards out. It was pretty desperate stuff. Even during all this, Dumbarton had a glorious chance to win. Shuggy Ward picked the ball up deep in his own half near the touchline. After evading a horrendous lunge by an Arbroath player he took the ball up to Arbroath penalty box, beating four players on the way and hit a curling shot towards the top right corner. Unfortunately, the Arbroath keeper, at full stretch, pushed it round the post.

The Arbroath pressure continued, all the way through the five minutes of injury time that the referee saw fit to add. But the defence managed to hold out and we made our way back to pub happy to have escaped with a point.