Brechin City 2 - 2 St Johnstone: Glaur, glory and no little romance for bold Brechin

Published on Sunday 13 March 2011 12:01

They have the wildest dreams in Brechin and they'll still be having them this week if they're not having sleepless nights at the shining prospect of what may yet be their finest hour.

The club's list of honours won is meagre to say the least - Second Division twice, Third Division once, Forfarshire Cup five times - but Brechin City can still reach a Scottish Cup semi-final for the first time in 105 years of trying if they beat Premier League St Johnstone in next week's replay.

Who's to say the underdogs won't emerge as top dog on the evidence of Saturday's assured display when they hung on in there, going ahead and then coming from behind in what was, by common consensus, 'a proper old-fashioned cup tie' that oozed all the passion and commitment and blood and thunder that threatens to give football a good name.

No glamour here at Brechin, just the glaur and the glory. No prawn sandwiches and millionaire lifestyles, just mutton pies and part-time players who put their heart and soul into simply playing the game.

It ended all square after 90 minutes, two goals from rampaging Brechin striker Rory McAllister cancelling out a second half double by the Perth side who, it should not be forgotten, have cup dreams of their own.

And it ended with both managers happy to have survived, praising each other's exhausted players and eulogising the romance of the cup and the spirit of sporting contest. There was hardly a dry eye in the house.

On another day when history was not going to be there for the making, the match would almost certainly have been postponed. It was rescued by a flashmob of 70 volunteers who cleared the overnight snow, spread a lorry load of sand to soak up the pools of puddled water and marched up and down to fork away the rest.

The last inspection by referee Steve Conroy was 20 minutes before kick-off, but by then the 3,500 capacity crowd had threaded its way through the town's streets past the window displays offering local encouragement, past the burst red and white balloons outside the Swan and the Northern and Hudsons Bar, and past the bedraggled banner outside the Brown Horse Hotel before taking up their places in the stands and the narrow terracing in front of the famous hedge.

A muddy surface with the consistency of a suet pudding under a sullen, sodden sky that dripped all afternoon like a runny nose, was as good as it was going to get, so both teams shrugged their shoulders and splashed out onto the pitch to get on with it.Within minutes the visitors had smacked the ball against the underside of the bar and the home team had a shot come back off the post, the last vestiges of green grass had vanished into the mud, and it was clear this was going to be a wee bit out of the ordinary.

It is tempting to say it wasn't pretty, all that inevitable slipping and sliding and miskicking, but in fact it had its own brand of home-grown beauty for the ruddy-faced beholders stacked up tight against the touchlines and generating the kind of atmosphere the Glebe has rarely seen in its century-old existence.

The battle raged for 39 minutes, long balls from back to front raining down like artillery shells, until a stramash in the St Johnstone box resulted in a hesitant referee pointing to the penalty spot. Up stepped Craig Molloy to ignore the stand full of baying Perth supporters that faced him and to dink it confidently into the corner. But a red foot had encroached before contact was made and the referee decreed it had to be retaken. This time it was McAllister who stepped up to slam the ball emphatically into exactly the same corner of the net. Pause for breath and a huddle in the warm dressing rooms and then out again for St Johnstone to damp down home hopes with two goals, the first from substitute Craig Millar who had barely had time to get his strip dirty, and the second from Danny Invincibile, his first for the club since signing earlier this year. The goals seemed to have 'job done' written all over them.

Brechin heads went down a little but, as if by order of the footballing gods, the romance of the cup raised its mud-slattered head with 12 minutes remaining as McAllister latched onto a cross-field pass, turned the defence and beat the goalkeeper on the diagonal.

There was time enough for St Johnstone's Steven Reynolds to blast over a shot that should have been a tap in and for McAllister to almost snatch it at the death at the other end with a shot that would have nailed his hat-trick except it sailed high and wide.

So Brechin manager Jim Weir must take his team of dreaming second division part-timers down the road to Perth to start all over again. He knows the way well having been a player there for 13 years himself. His son Sam is a Saints supporter. His wife Susan works at St Johnstone as a sales executive. If that's not serious romance, what is?