Match ended 0-0
Match Information
Attendance: 10,000
Referee: J Baillie (Motherwell)
Matchday: Saturday
Match Trivia
If I can trust my eyesight, Rangers lost this match. St Johnstone scored a perfectly good goal in the first half. It was this way, Tennant banged the ball up into the middle, and McCall went after it. To make contact, McCall had to lift his foot about waist high. He reached the ball, and it was on its way into the net when Dawson, who had dashed out, collided with McCalls foot. Naturally, the goalkeeper was injured, but as he had invited injury himself, I was quite at a loss to understand why a free kick should have been given against McCall. Of course, even at a goalless draw, St Johnstone put up a good performance. If I say that their defenders took chief credit, I do not wish to convey the impression that all afternoon they had their backs to the wall against a superior team. Bu no means. They had a good share of the attacking, and Dawson was by no means idle. Wylie had plenty to do also, but only twice was there a really near thing. McPhail on one occasion had merely to give the ball a tap with his head, but got too much strength into it, and sent it over the bar. In the second half, McPhail again it who was the centre-piece. He delivered a fine grounder for the foot of the post, and Wylie countered it with an equally fine save. Rangers failure as a team must have been galling to their supporters. There was no combination in their attack. They played like a lot of strangers to each other. At a late stage, Captain Simpson was seen rallying his company for a mass attack, and they went bashing into the St Johnstone lines in a crude and desperate effort to break through. But St Johnstone were not to be beaten that way either. Though at times the tide of battle flowed dangerously near Wylie, there was always a head or a foot to clear the immediate danger. Moulds didnt care where the ball went so long as he got rid of it. Welsh was another who often intervened, and in fact, the whole St Johnstone team were sometimes seem more or less on the defensive. Dawson was clear of blame, but of the ten outfield Rangers, only one stood out as playing up to reputation, and that was the evergreen Dougie Gray. That disallowed goal quite apart, the referee seemed affected by the blunderland atmosphere. Nobody can hope for perfection, but the mistakes here were rather more than the allowable margin of error
