LATEST MATCH SUMMARY

Mathieson
Lilley	Rowe	Aitken	McAllister
Cleeland	Bailey	Russell	Leslie
Nesovic		Mallan

SUBSTITUTES
Adams 77 mins	Armstrong 59 mins	Townsley 59 mins

The stand in management duo of Ken Eadie and George Rowe experienced defeat for the first time in their short four game spell in charge today in what was an important game that both teams had really to win, in the end the twenty one hardy soles who had made it down from Forfar to support their favourites went away the happier of the two sets of supporters as they watched their team put away three goals twice in the space of five days.

The Queens team saw a number of changes from the young sides that have taken the park in the past three weeks, in came Marc Cleeland and Steven Leslie to join Lee Bailey and Gary Russell in midfield whilst Charlie Adams was relegated to the substitutes bench and Mark Weir, Brian Caldwell, Adam Moffat and Denis Boyle all had to settle for playing against Forfar's Under eighteen team at the Crichton. Big Jim Thompson did not feature and Derek Townsley shared the bench with Adams and Armstrong.

Queens midfield was expected to be dominant as it was packed with ball winners, unfortunately they were unable to release the forwards with any quality final balls and ended up chasing the game against an ordinary Forfar team who in reality were there for the taking. A number of chances were made in the first half, notably a scramble in the box resulting in Lee Bailey having his shot pushed away low at the right hand post and a back post header from David Lilley which ended up in the side netting.

The writing was however on the wall as Forfar found a flat footed Queens defence wanting on a couple of occasions prior to the 33rd minute when Cargill exploit a slip by George Rowe and finished clinically. The groans of the Dumfries faithful had only just died down six minutes later when the defence looked for an offside decision whilst Forfar's McIlrevey slipped the ball past Mathieson for number two.

Half time came and Queen's continued the second half as they ended the first in terms of line up, after fifteen second half minutes the management duo of Row/Eadie decided to inject a bit of creativeness into the play and removed the ineffective Leslie, replacing him with Townsley and at the same time replacing the tiring Nesovic with Armstrong. This certainly enlivened Queens and allowed the midfield to find a channel to release the hard won possession. Forfar had already at this stage settled back to defend and looked quite capable of being able to handle anything that the Dumfries forward line could summon.

A last throw of the dice was replacing Mallan with Adams but this had no effect, the final nail in the coffin was when Townsley broke forward down the right, beating a number of Forfar defenders and crossing perfectly for Cleeland, unfortunately Marc dwelled on the ball too long and ended up directing his shot straight into the grateful arms of the Forfar keeper. In between times Forfar increased their lead to three from a breakaway that the defence were unable to contain.

At the end of the game after the dust settled Queens now lie five points adrift of Arbroath and four clear of Forfar. The next two games are crucial and both are potentially very difficult games at the best of times, away to the two Thistles, first next weekend into the Highlands and then a week later to visit our old friends at Partick.