South Lochaber Thistle teeter on relegation precipice following Westerlands defeat

Westerlands AFC 4 South Lochaber Thistle 1

 

GGPAFL Division One

 

South Lochaber Thistle’s poor season continued with another defeat, this time against Glasgow University alumni side Westerlands AFC, writes Peter Newman.

 

The Jags once again travelled with a reshuffled line-up which saw player/manager Alan Gray move into the back line alongside Darren Duncan on the left flank and full back Sean Noble on the right.

 

But this was not enough to prevent SLT being consistently overrun in midfield.

 

Capitalising on this were the McCrossan family who had a field day at the expense of the Highlanders.

 

First on the scoresheet was Daniel McCrossan who opened the scoring after 12 minutes with Stephen McCrossan making it 2-0. jut over 10 minutes later.

 

A half time team talk by Alan Gray failed to provoke much of a response and with a quarter of an hour gone in the second half, Fraser Russell put the home side 3-0 to the good and the tie all but beyond Thistle.

 

Club founder and midfield veteran Dave Forbes reduced the arrears when Noble overlapped in the wide area and fired in a pin point cross for the creaking playmaker to power a header home via the crossbar but at 3-1 this was too little, too late.

 

Finally, another McCrossan - Calum - fired home to make the final score 4-1.

 

Alan Gray said: 'This was another very disappointing result. Although we had to reshuffle the personnel - a regular occurrence this season - we had enough on the park to get a much better result than this.

 

'Although we remain in the relegation places, it is not panic stations yet as we are two points off eighth place and have seven games in hand.

 

'However, if we don’t start playing with more heart and getting better results very quickly, we will find ourselves in dire straights come the end of the season.'

 

This weekend, SLT are on the roafd again to play second in the table East Kilbride YM FC.