Written by John - OTR Saturday, 14 August 1999 00:00

The trouble with these high scoring games is that I can never remember all the details. But basically it all boiled down to a defensive shambles. Montrose took the lead, when the beat the offside trap early in the first half. It was one of those that, from a fan's perspective, appeared to be miles off, but I bet if we had access to a slow motion replay we would have seen Jamie Bruce or Stevie Jack stepping out late.

Montrose actually looked the better team at this point. Desparate measures were called for. So we told Lorna to go to the wee girl's room. And it worked, again. While she was away, Paddy Flannery stuck one away to bring the scores level. Paddy added another shortly after to regain the advantage. But Stevie Jack managed to ruin it when he misheadered a back pass to Kenny Meechan, leaving the Montrose attacker the simple job of collecting the ball and rounding Meechan to score.

In the second half, Dumbarton took the lead with a superb move. Joe Robertson took the ball in his own half on the left hand side. He fired a long low ball across to the right wing where Billy Melvin picked it up. Billy ran on into the box, passing a couple of defenders on the way and crossed the ball over to the back post to Paddy Flannery who squared it back across the goal to Andy Brown who sidefooted in from one yard. Probably the easiest goal he'll score all season. In fact, probably the last goal he'll score all season seeing as he doesn't appear to be very good.

In typical Dumbarton fashion, defeat was snatched from jaws of victory in the last ten minutes. Montrose equalized with another offside-beating pass (but I may be wrong about that). Then almost immediately after the restart, there was an almighty stramash in the Dumbarton penalty box, with bodies everywhere and the ball ended up in the net. 4-3 to Montrose. Disaster.

Team:- Meechan, Dickie, Brittain, Bruce, Jack, King, Melvin B, Grace, Flannery, Brown, Robertson. No subs used.

Other highlights:-
Lorna pulling out from the Elephant into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Magic that was.
The way that the Cutty Sark seems to stuck in the mid 80s.