Partick Thistle 4, Cowdenbeath 1
Saturday 4th July 2009
Thistle rounded off a three day training stint in Edinburgh with a close door friendly match with Cowdenbeath at Edinburgh University.
On a brick hard, bumpy pitch Thistle included morning signing Bryan Hodge in their starting line-up. The hard surface was hardly conducive to flowing football with the result that the first 45 minutes of what was in essence just a step up from a training game were fairly disjointed.
While Thistle were the better of the two teams it was Jonny Tuffey, whose last outing had been against World Champions Italy for Northern Ireland, that was actually the busier of the two keepers producing three decent first half save.
Thistle though did take a 1-0 lead into the half-time break with a goal in the 38th minute. Stephen McKeown touched the ball to the trialist striker at the edge of the box and his low shot found the corner of the net.
Thistle introduced Ian Maxwell, Chris Erskine and Damon Gray to the fray at half-time ahead of a second half that was almost totally dominated by Thistle. Thistle had already come close to extending their lead twice when Thistle finally scored a second goal in the 57th minute. The ball falling nicely into the path of Liam Buchanan 8 yards from goal and the Thistle striker made no mistake.
2-0 became 3-0 in the 74th minute. Kris Doolan flicking the ball through to Paul Cairney who fired low past the Cowdenbeath keeper.
An error in the Thistle defence allowed Cowdenbeath to reduce the leeway with 6 minutes remaining but there was still time for a fourth Thistle goal.
Chris Erskine had impressed with his strong running and he and Damon Gray combined to set up Kris Doolan for an easy finish.
There is a danger in reading too much into this early pre-season performances but this was an assured and confident display from Thistle with some of the new faces in the ranks catching the eye.
Team: Tuffey, Robertson, Twaddle (Maxwell), Corrigan, Archibald, Paton, Rowson (Erskine), McKeown (Cairney), Buchanan (Doolan), Trialist (Gray), Hodge (Little).
