2007/08 Season Review
A serialised account of our season by our man who has been at almost every match home and away - Ewan Lithgow
Part Three - September 7th June 2008
The month began with a second straight 1-0 league win, this time at Morton courtesy of a Sean O'Connor goal that owed much to Dobbie's set up work. The victory moved us up to the giddy heights of 4th. It also saw the first competitive outing of the season for Jamie Adams, back from his hernia surgery for a 22 minute substitute appearance. Sadly that would be all we saw of him all season. In midweek, in a bounce game against Rangers arranged precisely to give Adams some match practice, he suffered cruciate ligament damage that would end his season. It was a big blow to the club and the manager but an even bigger blow to a young player. Fortunately at time of writing his rehabilitation appears to be on track at Kilmarnock. For what it's worth we lost that closed-door game at Murray Park 2-0 to goals by Burke and Gow. Who would have guessed at the time it wouldn't be our only match with Rangers this season?

Back to business in the league and a disappointing 1-1 home draw with Clyde at least maintained the unbeaten home record. Stephen Dobbie netted an early penalty but McGregor headed an equaliser and Clyde hit woodwork twice before Dougie Imrie missed a penalty for them in the second half. In the end for us it was a fortunate point.


Jim clears his lines against his former club

A week later we slipped to a disappointing 2-0 loss at Ian McCall's Partick Thistle with Buchanan and McKinley scoring the goals. Although we remained 5th in the table things were so tight that we were only three points from the bottom.
We missed a real opportunity to put some daylight between ourselves and the bottom of the table when basement boys Stirling Albion came calling in the month's final fixture. Careless defending allowed Easton to open the scoring for the visitors but Sean O'Connor levelled having been sent clear by Bingham and then Dobbie, on as a substitute, put us in front. However Stirling had the last say when McGowan failed to clear a cross properly and John Paul McBride hammered the ball home from 25 yards out in the last minute. The result meant we finished the month in 7th spot and still only three points off the bottom.


Dobbs is challenged by Craig Reid, they would go on to be team mates at Palmerston
Part Four - October

This wasn't the best of months for the club and started on a couple of low notes with news of the death of former groundsman Tom Kerr followed by the arrest of Steve Tosh following an incident outside a Dumfries pub in the early hours of Wednesday morning. He would eventually plead guilty months later to an assault charge and pay a small fine. At the time though it was another problem and poor publicity we didn't need.

Things weren't helped by the first home defeat of the season against Dunfermline Athletic. The Pars were a fine squad on paper with something like half a dozen internationals in their ranks but they were having a shocking start to the season and a 1-0 home defeat wasn't good. Tam McManus scored the only goal, following up after Burchill's shot was only parried by MacDonald. The game was more memorable though for a last minute incident when Queens were awarded a penalty kick thanks to Wilson's clumsy challenge on Brian Gilmour. With both Dobbie and O'Neill, the top two takers at the club, on the park there was no doubt that Gilmour himself was never going to take it so quite why he spent at least a minute on the park arguing with his team-mates about it is beyond reason. In the end Chisholm ordered the winger to give the ball to Dobbie who, as inevitably happens in these cases, duly had his kick saved. It was a decent kick and a fine save but the whole argument over who was to take it certainly hadn't helped the situation. By the following week Stevie Tosh had been installed as penalty taker unless O'Neill was on the park and so it remained for the rest of the season.

The delayed penalty is saved.
Injuries were still causing problems though and for the Dunfermline game Queens had only been able to name four fit subs for the bench (Paton was a named sub but not fit to play) and were forced to line up with a back three for the only time in Chisholm's tenure to date in order to make best use of the players who were available. Even then it didn't work and was adjusted to a back four by half time. Sean O'Connor was also struggling with a knee problem and lasted just quarter of an hour against Dunfermline before making use of the upcoming international break to go for a clean up operation. In midweek Chisholm announced that he only had NINE players training so bad was the injury crisis. Never the less, we did scrape together enough players to beat Airdrie United 4-1 in another 'bounce' game. Brian Gilmour opened the scoring, a Trialist scored a second before O'Neill got the 3rd and 4th.
Before the following weekend Queens signed David Nixon on a three-month emergency loan from Motherwell whilst Mark Whorlow was formally released. Nixon made his debut at Perth in a meek 2-0 defeat that might well go down as our worst performance of the season. We carried virtually no threat and lost to goals from Deuchar and Jackson.

The month's football was completed with a trip to Livingston and a creditable 2-2 draw. On a windy day O'Connor judged a cross best of everyone to open the scoring only for Dorrans to equalise immediately after latching onto a short backpass by McQuilken. Tomas Pesir gave Livi the lead but O'Connor set up Dobbie for a tap in to gain us a point a few minutes later. Unfortunately though Stirling Albion's surprising 3-0 win over Dunfermline meant we actually dropped to the bottom of the division, level with Livingston on points but behind on goal difference.
The month ended with a tricky looking Scottish Cup draw offering a trip to Peterhead. A potential banana skin and a costly trip to boot. Meantime off the park Jamie Rutherford, son of director Colin, was appointed as 'Business Development Manager'.

Ewan Lithgow
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