We kept the players ticking over during the festive period with training and a friendly against the Vale of Leithen and then with game being off last Saturday we managed to get another friendly organised on the astro at Peffermill against Lothian Thistle. The support we had coming to watch these games was superb and greatly appreciated. Squad wise everyone is fit and with Fraser serving his last game of his ban yesterday everyone is now available. I'm hoping to add another body to the squad this week.

I think its safe to say that there has been a real community spirit shown over the last week with the massive effort to get yesterdays game on. The committee deserve great credit for thinking ahead and getting down the covers last week with the help from volunteers and when the snow came Wednesday it acted like an extra cover and the frost couldn't get into the ground. Charlie and a crew were up at ground on Friday making sure the car park and terracing was safe and cleared of snow and ice then yesterday about 30 bodies were at the ground from 7am in the morning removing the covers with frozen snow on top of them. It was real hard graft and it was around 12:30 when everything was ready and the pitch could be lined. On behalf of the players and management team I would like to thank everyone for their hard work to get the game on it was an unbelievable effort. It's important at this time of the season that we don't get too many games off as we'll end up playing catch up towards the end of the season and when we are still competing in all competitions it could create a big backlog of games.

The game itself and we took a good 15-20 minutes to get going and for me we didn't play the conditions early in the game and I thought Lochee looked good. Brendan made a good point when saying that we hadn't played on grass for a while and our last two competitive games and two friendlies have been on astro which suits our game as we like to get the ball down and play. Yesterday was more about percentages, the pitch was heavy(stood up well though) and wasn't conducive to a passing game which we tried to play early on. Once we started getting the ball forward quicker and played the game in their half we took control of the game. A great cross from Archie and an excellent header from Wayne gave us the lead and we had chances to make it 2-0 but couldn't take them. We started the second half well and Archie scored a good header from a great delivery from Adam and again we had chances to put the game to bed but didn't take them and to Lochee's credit they kept at it and Michael had to make a couple of really important saves to keep a clean sheet.

It wasn't our best performance but I don't think you can fault the players efforts, they put in a real shift in difficult conditions and were also under pressure as we were favourites to win the game. The most important thing is we are through and hopefully we can get another home draw in the next round.

A difficult game up at Broughty next week who have a lot of ex-senior players in their ranks. Lets hope the weather improves and we can get another league game under our belts and keep our unbeaten run going.

All the best!!

Robbie