Scottish Cup final: First-class Weir and Cuellar lift it as players call the shots

Published on Saturday 24 May 2008 19:47

IT IS often forgotten by our manager-obsessed media pundits that it is players and not coaches who win or lose matches, and it's a truism that, in the long run, players of better quality will usually beat those who are not of equal class, however brave and industrious they may be.

Queen of the South's best hope yesterday lay with their successful strike force of Sean O'Connor and Stephen Dobbie.

With 33 goals between them, nine of them in the Cup, the little and large partnership – Dobbie is no smout at 5ft 10ins but O'Connor towers over him at 6ft 3ins – have been the engine of Queens' success.

Ranged against them were one of Scotland's players of the year in Carlos Cuellar and the most-capped man on the pitch, David Weir having played 61 times for Scotland.

The Spaniard has been a revelation since signing from Osasuna. Both are tall and muscular as well as skilful, and to many observers, Cuellar and Weir have been the most solid defenders at the back for Rangers since the nine-in-a-row days of Butcher and Gough et al.

So how would O'Connor and Dobbie fare? It's all very well bashing in the goals against First Division defenders, but what happens when you meet one of the best defensive partnerships around?

The answer was not entirely predictable. Weir and Cuellar have looked tired at times in recent weeks, having played an astonishing 127 games between them before yesterday's final, and they made mistakes.

But in the final analysis, they were simply too good for the strike force opposing them. O'Connor and Dobbie did make some impact but nowhere near what might have been anticipated.

The duo's potential was largely nullified, and that might well have made the difference in a match where the goals came from other Doonhamers. Wolverhampton-born O'Connor, 26, is in his second spell at Palmerston Park, having been brought back from Morecambe for 10,000 by Ian McCall. It was a gamble by McCall, as O'Connor had spent 18 months out of football with a knee injury. Dobbie perhaps had a point to prove to the club where he started his career before moving on to Hibs and St Johnstone.

O'Connor started as an old-fashioned centre forward, a target man for forward passes which were often wayward. On several occasions he did lay off some precise balls, but his colleagues could not take advantage.

Dobbie, meanwhile, was getting no change out of Cuellar or Weir, though he hit some sweet passes. The difference was that, while Weir and Cuellar dealt adroitly with the threat posed by O'Connor and Dobbie, there was just not the quantity of decent possession afforded to the Queens' strikers to enable them to penetrate the Rangers' defence with any regularity.

At the end of the first half, it looked like journeymen nil, quality won, but these underdogs carried real bite, and O'Connor and Dobbie were to the fore in the Dumfries side's second-half revival.

O'Connor more than atoned for his earlier error, a sclaffed clearance before Rangers' second, with a superb contribution to the Doonhamers' first goal. His run to the by-line was timed to perfection and the cutback was so precise that Steve Tosh couldn't help but score.

And it was O'Connor's threat in the air which surely distracted Weir and Cuellar when they were posted missing as Jim Thomson rose to power home the second.

After the second Queens' goal, it was noticeable that Weir and Cuellar took charge and tightened things up at the back for Rangers.

In the dying minutes, with the players understandably tiring, Dobbie was replaced by John O'Neill while for Rangers the double act just kept going – it was Cuellar who mopped up after Weir made a slight error. It can probably be said that if Dobbie and O'Connor had enjoyed anything like the service provided to the Rangers' attack, they would have caused their illustrious opponents much greater trouble.

But in the end, you suspect Cuellar and Weir would still have proved the masters and ended on the winning side – quality will out, and it usually does.