William Hill Scottish Cup 3rd Round, Bayview Stadium, Tuesday 29th November 2016
East Fife 1 (Kerr 65’)
Edinburgh City 1 (See 41’)
Man of the Match: Jason Kerr
East Fife XI: Goodfellow, Mercer, Kane, Page, Lamont, Brown (Kerr 63’), Insall (Wallace 51’), Smith, Wilkie, Robinson (Slattery 67’), Naysmith
Subs Not Used: Hurst, Austin
Booked: None
Edinburgh City XI: Stobie, Mbu, Dunsmore, Harrison, Laird, McKee, McFarland, Gair, See, Guthrie (Dunn 63’), Cummings
Subs Not Used: Antell, McConnell, Muhsin
Booked: McKee, Guthrie, Gair, Laird
Referee: David Lowe
Attendance: 339
Edinburgh City were the visitors to Bayview in the third round of the William Hill Scottish Cup and held East Fife to a 1-1 draw forcing a replay at Meadowbank Stadium. East Fife made four changes to the side that lost to Queen’s Park with Mark Hurst, Pat Slattery, Tony Wallace and Jason Kerr making way for Scott Mercer, Ryan Goodfellow, Scott Robinson and Gary Naysmith.
The game certainly wasn’t one for the neutrals with both sides struggling to break each other down. East Fife should have taken the lead, however, on 19 minutes when Lamont whipped in a cross from the left but Smith hit the side netting from a couple of yards. Edinburgh City scored with their first real attack of the game. Guthrie found See with a pass on the left-hand of the box and the striker fired past Goodfellow into the bottom corner.
Edinburgh City should have doubled their lead shortly after the break but Laird’s shot hit the post and Goodfellow was able to recover. The home side began to grow into the game and Lamont forced a good save out of City ‘keeper Stobie with a shot from the left. The East Fife attackers were struggling to win anything in the air against former East Fifer defender Mbu so the coaching team sent on defender Jason Kerr to play as a striker. The gamble paid off as Kerr levelled the tie with his first touch of the ball. A free kick by Mercer on the half-way line was flicked on by Page into the path of Kerr who headed past Stobie.
Substitute Dunn has the chance to put the visitors a head on 69 minutes when he tried to lob Goodfellow but the ‘keeper managed to get a good hand on the ball to push it away. East Fife’s best opportunity for a winner came injury time when Smith forced another good save from Stobie before Wilkie’s follow-up was blocked on the 6-yard line. The sides will meet again on Monday 5th December at Meadowbank Stadium for the right to play Livingston in the next round.
After the match Manager Gary Naysmith spoke to East Fife TV:
“We made it tough. You try and warn the players with your experience that if you start off at a slow tempo, just passing the ball for the sake of passing it, you’re going let them settle into the game, you’re going to play at their speed. We should have been imposing ourselves on the game quicker, a wee bit more urgency the way we did in the second half. We didn’t start at the right tempo and I have to take a bit of the fault as well because I tried to play a different formation thinking it would cause them problems but it probably caused us more problems. So we changed it back at half-time. We got a bit of luck when it hit the post to go 2-0 but after that I think with our second half performance we had more than enough to win the game. At half-time I would have been delighted to get a draw after the way we had played but in the second half I’m disappointed that we’ve not won the game with what we created.”