St Andrews United boss Greg Shields suffers first league defeat in eight

Trailing 3-0 at half-time to Hawthorn goals by John Smith, Lewis Elder and Jordan Tosh, United pulled one back through John Tod before the hosts wrapped it up with Tosh’s second, leaving Shields’ men 12th in the East of Scotland Football League Premier Division with 21 points from 20 matches.

“It’s probably our first blip in the league,” Shields said. “I don’t mean a blip negatively, but just in terms of the result.

"Having my first league defeat in charge of St Andrews is disappointing, but that’s football.

"In the first half we had a couple of chances at 0-0. Lewis Payne had a few good chances and then Ryan McManus had a free-kick at the edge of the box at 1-0.

"But the manner in which we lost the goals – not tracking runners and a silly giveaway when we went back when we should have gone forward – was bad.

"Although I think 2-0 would have been a fair score at half-time, not 3-0.

"We didn’t deserve anything though. It’s the first game I’ve really come away from thinking: ‘We got beaten there, well beaten’.

"They were very direct and physical and it’s hard to play against that. You have to adapt and we didn’t make a good enough job of it.

"But you move on. Our big games are not teams like Hill of Beath or Musselburgh, it’s teams who are mid-table or in the bottom half. That’s our competition right now.

"So I’m not really losing any sleep over the Hill of Beath result.

"I’m happy with the group. We’re a good footballing side, but in terms of learning the different side of how to play, we got a bit of a doing over from Hill of Beath that way. They had physicality from experienced players who’ve been in the league a long time.

"I’m building a group that’s a younger dimension who could be like that in five years. We’re on the right pathway.

"We’ll hopefully go back there next year and give a better account of ourselves.”

Shields was then asked what his instructions were to his players at half-time, having conceded the three goals in front of 201 fans at Keirs Park in Cowdenbeath.

He said: “You can either lose it as a coach or just remain calm. It would have been easy to go through players and tell them what they’d not done well.

"But I think the players knew exactly how it had gone wrong. It was just purely individual mistakes at bad times that cost them.

"It was easy to point fingers at that moment but I don’t think it was about that. It was about explaining to them that we had to react and not get beaten in the second half.

"If we had made the same mistakes in the second half we would have lost five or six.

"I made a change at half-time, putting three midfielders in instead of two to bolster it a wee bit.

"We won a lot more second balls in the second half and got a goal.

"And at 3-1, Ross Cunningham was clean through to go 3-2 but it was on his weaker foot and the keeper saved it.

"That would have given us a wee chance. But, with sod’s law, they sent a ball into orbit, it bounced over my centre-back and the boy ran through and scored. It was a calamity goal and let’s just say at the end of the night the football was black and blue!”

Saints continue their league campaign at fourth-placed Haddington Athletic this Saturday in a 2.30pm kick-off.

Shields said: “Haddington will be like Whitburn and Dunipace.

"It’s a like for like match. Over the last two games I’ve really utilised my squad, everybody’s played, everybody’s started. I made five changes on Wednesday night to give players a rest ahead of playing Haddington.”