Clyde 1-4 St Mirren B

Two early red cards posed an ultimately insurmountable challenge to The Bully Wee this evening, as their KDM Evolution Trophy campaign got off to the worst possible start in Hamilton.

Darren Young unsurprisingly rang the changes for this one, with only Jay Hogarth, Logan Dunachie and Timam Scott retaining their places from the weekend’s match away to Dumbarton. There were first competitive Clyde starts for Tam Cruden, Keir Gilligan and Bobby Kiltie, whilst club captain Andy Murdoch made his first start of the campaign in midfield.

Gilligan’s involvement in the match lasted little more than five minutes, as he pulled down a Saints attacker as the last man. There had been strong shades of offside from another forward who impeded the on-loan left-back, but referee Sean Murdoch and his assistant were unmoved and issued Gilligan a red card.

An uphill task was made impossible not even ten minutes later when Sam Campbell followed Gilligan down the tunnel, courtesy of a rash challenge on the halfway line. It looked as though there was set to be a third red card in the game when Jack Lavery appeared to lash out at Murdoch, but the Clyde skipper’s namesake decided a yellow card was fair punishment.

From that point on, it was one-way traffic, though the home side defended manfully against a fairly toothless young Saints side and managed to keep the scoreline at 0-0 going into the interval.

Tired legs soon started to have an impact, with the visitors’ energy seeing them find spare men in the forward areas, and the lively Luke Douglas opened the scoring within ten minutes of play resuming when his close-range header beat Hogarth.

Clyde stuck at it, though, and Craig Howie found an unlikely equaliser when fellow substitute Marley Redfern latched onto Grant Tamosevicius’ spill to tee him up in the middle of the Saints box.

Lavery made sure that St Mirren B would win the game, however, scoring a deflected strike before then adding a fine curling effort from the edge of the area. Ruari Duff added further gloss to the scoreline late on, when he found himself spare in the area and tucked home at the back post.