HIBERNIAN 1
DUNFERMLINE 1
NEW season, same old story: Hibernian are dashing in attack, rubbish in defence; Dunfermline are, well, Dunfermline; and Scott Brown is still daft.
Despite their third-place finish last season, there were only four teams with a worse defence than the Easter Road side, the goals of Derek Riordan and Garry O'Connor ensuring they won more games than they lost.
Lucky, then, that the pair are still at the club, and on this early evidence as dangerous as ever, while in Steven Fletcher, another has rolled off the spiky-blonde/quick-feet production line. On Saturday, they gave Dunfermline a goal and a man headstart before thrashing them, only misfortune and fine goalkeeping preventing victory.
Tony Mowbray, last season's manager of the season, has tried to reconcile his team's instinct for flairwith the glaring necessity to reinforce at the back. The obvious need for a new goalkeeper has been addressed - Zbigniew Malkowski looked competent, unlike his error-prone predecessor, Simon Brown - while Michael Stewart, the summer signing from Hearts, has been enlisted to provide midfield resilience.
Mowbray's intentions were clear from the start, a 4-2-3-1 formation designed to put last season's relegation candidates under immediate pressure, but with Riordan and Fletcher uninterested in tracking back, the defence quickly found itself overworked.
Scott Morrison had forced a save from Malkowski before Greg Shields popped up from the right-back position, unhindered by Riordan, to finish off a decent passing move with a low left-foot shot from the penalty spot.
This was Shields' first game since last November, after operations on a knee, torn adductor muscles and a double 'Gilmore's groin' - a severe muscle/tendon problem with similar symptoms to a hernia.
The defenderwas convinced his careerwas finished. "I never thought I'd get fit again, to get there and score on my first game back - I couldn't have written the script better, " Shields said. "In January, February, I couldn't diagnose my injury properly and thought that was it.
I remember saying to my wife, family and a few of the players: 'That's it, I can't see light at the end of the tunnel'.
"I went up to see Tom Gilmartin [the Brechin City physio]; he was the sixth person I'd been to. I thought I had a hernia but I was being told no, it's just the adductor problem. Gilmartin said: 'You've got a Gilmore', and I went to see Dr Gilmore himself down in London, because I wanted the best surgeon possible. I was on his table two seconds and he diagnosed it. It's a pity because I could have been back three or four months before that."
Shields was certainly strong enough, while last defender, to take out Riordan shortly after his goal. He admitted to "accidental" contact as the striker burst through on goal, but escaped punishment.
Minutes later, Charlie Richmond, the referee, issued Scott Brown with his first booking, for a petulant retaliatory tug of Darren Young's shirt. They scuffled across the pitch for another 10 minutes before Brown threw himself feet first, studs up at Young, winning the ball but breaking his opponent's shinpad in half to prompt an entertaining brawl and a second yellow card.
"The sending off was, maybe, because of the commotion rather than the challenge, " said Mowbray. "I was pretty sure the referee was not going to book him and that's the frustration.
Scott is a player that needs to calm down at certain times, but I'm not going to tell a player not to tackle." Brown will miss next week's game, the Edinburgh derby.
It's hard to envisage anything but a grim season ahead for Dunfermline. The squad is weaker than the one which struggled last season and their inability to keep the ball even with an extra man was an indictment. They were not helped by an injury to Scott Thomson, who was stretchered off with suspected knee ligament damage. Yesterday those fears were allayed and the defender should be back in training next week.
Riordan and O'Connor continued to dominate before the latter finally equalised with a quarter of an hour left. Ivan Sproule's dangerous cross from the left led to a Riordan shot which was deflected across the face of goal, where O'Connor kneed the ball in.
"We seem to a be a better team when we give teams a goal start, " admitted Hibernian defender Gary Caldwell, who had chances himself to win the game. "Last year, we did it a lot, giving away sloppy goals and giving teams a head start, then suddenly we can press on and play better stuff. It's as if the more cavalier we are, the better team we are."
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