Clyde v Raith Rovers

Recap

Colin Hendry’s first competitive match at Broadwood turned out to be a nightmare as a much hungrier Raith Rovers progressed to the 2nd Round of the Cis Insurance Cup. The manager retained the same starting 11 cruelly robbed of a point on Saturday with Marvyn Wilson making the transition from trialist to player after signing for Clyde on Monday.

Masterton set up the game’s first chance, when his free kick caught out the well-timed run of Christian Smith, but the big youngster could not keep his volley down, and blasted over.

The visitor’s were far from overawed by meeting opponents from a higher division, and were passing the ball to good effect, with Carcacy in particular looking lively and his pace was causing all sorts of problems to a shaky looking Clyde defence.

It was no surprise when Raith took the lead and it was Carcary who was the architect. He basically skinned Higgins on the touchline and raced clear. He then cut inside McGregor and showed great awareness to feed Sloan on the left hand side, who checked back, crossed to the unmarked Tod at the backpost to direct his header past Hutton to give the visitors a deserved lead.

As the half wore on Clyde started to gain more possession, with Wilson quite influential although he would find himself in the book, for a next to nothing challenge. Clyde’s first real piece of quality almost brought an equaliser as half-time drew closer. Smith picked the ball up just inside the halfway line and went on a surging run, before feeding McGowan on the left wing. The Captain cut inside to his favoured right foot, and delivered a teasing low cross, that Arbuckle met before goalkeeper and defender, but looked on as the ball came back off the cross-bar.

Clyde’s luck was again out, when a deep Bradley cross saw Imrie almost wrestled to the ground by the neck, before he somehow managed to connect with an overhead kick that Raith keeper Fahey superbly turned over the bar. Perhaps the half-time whistle came at a bad time for Clyde.

For some strange reason, much of the second half, was strangely subdued, with no real purpose to Clyde trying to get back into the cup tie. Any lingering thoughts of this were put firmly to bed, by a quite wonderful goal by Carcary.

In almost a carbon copy, of how he set up the first goal, he outpaced Higgins, beat Mcgregor with ease, but this time unleashed an unstoppable shot from 20 yards into the roof of the net. Game over.

10 minutes later, and Raith rubbed further salt in the wounds, by adding a third. Even though Tod should have been penalized for tugging back Potter, Weir’s tap in for Raith’s third did portray a realistic scoreline in the end.