Fir Park Corner FC verses Next Hamilton - Report

Last updated : 22 September 2005 By Speedie

A small Corner squad gathered early on the Sunday morning at May Street Park in Hamilton to take on Next. Graeme Farmer returned to side filling in for the unavailable Ross Clark who performed admirably just two weeks before. Graeme Ramage and manager David Fraser also missed out forcing a change in the system to four at the back.

The early exchanges were scrappy with the Corner unable to take advantage over a Next side who were clearly still trying to get their bearings in the match. The Corner were unable to create a great deal with very little space down the wings for Dave Hendry and Ross Galloway to exploit and the game quickly descended into a midfield battle. The first moment of real incident came around 20 minutes when a long range return ball trickled into the net after it was mishandled by Graeme Farmer, luckily for the Corner this effort was disallowed. This was a clear warning for the Corner and within 5 minutes Joe Lynas had broke through the heart of the Next defence and slotted home into the right hand corner. A few minutes later Next were two down courtesy of Lynas in an almost carbon copy of his first. A long ball down the right allowed Joe to get a shot in across the keeper leaving the defence standing.

Dave Hendry added to the score in what would turn out to be his last match for the Corner before his departure to Coltness.

The Corner started the second half well with numerous chances being created. A Ross Galloway run halted by the Next defence led to a penalty. Philip Speedie’s strike was strong but too near the impressive keeper. The Next boys were visibly lifted and started to show what they really could do.

The fight back began 40 minutes out with a bullet header from a corner following slack marking from the FPC defence. The resulting collapse meant Next were back in the game within 5 minutes with two defensive mistakes leading to two well taken goals, The 4th was probably the worst to lose as the FPC defensive all but stopped believing a penalty had been awarded.


It fell again to Joe Lynas to level the scores with an extraordinary chip of the despairing keeper. From this point on the Corner dominated and were able to restrict Next to speculative long range efforts. However, it was to be too late for FPC to clinch a scantly deserved winner.

Starting 11

Graeme Farmer

David Wyper

Gavin Hepworth

John Hendry

Ross Cunningham

Malcolm Boyd

David Hendry

Tony O Neill

Ross Galloway

Joe Lynas

Mark Gardiner

Substitutes

Philip Speedie

Chris Miller

Scott Mullen