SPARTANS 2nd XI beat Sporting 7-1 in a Central Scotland Amateur League game on the FieldTurf pitch at Ainslie Park and it ended up as nothing more than a training exercise for the Edinburgh club as they look ahead to this Saturday's home East of Scotland Cup tie.
The visiting side from Coatbridge were 3-0 down after 20 minutes and they had a player sent off by a no-nonsense referee in Allan Young from Falkirk.
The Sporting player sent off deserved to make an early exit and the wonder was that his team
boss did not take the player off before he was sent to the pavilion.
When he went off, Sporting played better football.
In fact, they scored their one and only goal of the game from Mike Gallacher after a real shocker of a mix-up in the home defence.
Despite their domination of the game, Spartans still led by only 3-1 at half-time but, after they increased their lead to 4-1, unbelievably, another visiting player was sent off leaving Sporting with only nine players.
From then on, the home side took the opportunity to practise their passing in the build-up to the EOS cup clash against a Stenhousemuir outfit that was meanwhile booking their place in the seventh round of the Scottish Amateur Cup with a 3-2 home win over St Mungo's.
Spartans went on to make the final scoreline against Sporting 7-1 and it was a very disappointing game of football, one of the few to take place in Edinburgh once again due to pitches being unplayable.
The blame for that lies entirely with the visiting team. To lose two players and leave their mates to struggle against a much better Spartans team was ridiculous in the extreme. Spartans could have – and should have – doubled their goals if they had really wanted to.
In the circumstances, they will need to have their sights set on goal again this Saturday. Stenhousemuir are a very good football team and they will test Spartans to the utmost.
I don't know what to say about Sporting, apart from well done to the players left on the pitch.
They even managed to caused some problems for the Spartans keeper in the second half, but it was all very futile.
Keith Boyes, Gary Bannon, Adam Perry and Nick Reid were all in good form up front for the home side, while the experienced Jim Rae – who has played in the Scottish Cup proper for the City Park side against the likes of Livingston and Alloa – hardly broke sweat in his left-sided defensive role.
Spartans: David Paterek, Mark Burns, Jim Rae, Jordan Steele, Paul Sutherland, Andrew Mitchell, Keith Boyes, Gary Bannon, Adam Perry, Nick Reid, Lukasz Zuk, Richard Harris, Martin Douglas, Sam Scott, Gary Young, Craig Graham.
ELSEWHERE, the last team involved from the Lothian & Edinburgh Amateur FA, Napier University, lost 8-1 away to St Pat's (Dumbarton) in the Scottish Amateur Cup.
Napier coach, Gary Cardle, said: "Obviously we're disappointed to lose a game so heavily, but when you have your centre-half suspended, one player out injured for three weeks and your six-foot centre midfielder away home to England for a family celebration it left us with an uphill task. Saying that, I can't really make excuses as we have a 28-man squad with quality all round but in the game against St Pat's it showed we haven't managed to have either played or trained for three weeks prior to this massive game.
"St Pat's are one of the best teams in Scottish Amateur football and their experience and organisation at this level showed in every area of the field.
"Our guys got a lesson on how to play football and also how to play it effectively. Hopefully, they have all learned something from this heavy defeat in that aspect. We also have to realise this is only our second season in amateur football and we now know where we have to get too if we want to play amongst the 'big boys' in Scottish Amateur football.
"It's now about looking forward to our season ahead in which we have the Logan and Anderson Cups to play for along with 20 league games to play to gain promotion from our Edinburgh Central Division."
It was another disastrous weekend for the Lothian & Edinburgh AFA, with only three of its other fixtures managing to beat the weather.
