St Andrews United boss Robbie Raeside blasts 'farcical' 2-1 loss at Heriot-Watt but then lauds 'fantastic' 8-1 hammering of Lochore Welfare

Saints manager Robbie Raeside had been left ‘tearing his hair out’ at the defensive deficiences which marred his team’s weekend loss at the students, but then he was ‘cock-a-hoop’ with how they bounced back against Lochore.

"The start to Saturday’s game was a farce,” Raeside told the Herald and Citizen. “I’ve never seen anything like it, it was just ridiculous.

"The referee killed us in the first five minutes because Cammy Lumsden makes a great challenge on their winger, the winger goes over the top, smashes Cammy’s ankle and the referee gives them a free-kick.

"Cammy’s lying on the touchline and he’s going to be out for weeks with ankle ligament damage.

"So we were down to ten men and the football gods were not with us. The ball ricochets off a couple of players and they knock it in.

"And then we are still down to ten men, we’re trying to put on a substitute but he’s not ready in time and we lose another goal.

"So after six minutes we were 2-0 down and had lost a player for four weeks. You can do all the planning you want but things like that happen and everything’s up in the air. It’s really frustrating but we responded well.”

Trailing 2-0 to those early two goals for the students, both scored by Campbell Marr, United pulled one back on 44 minutes when Lewis Sawers converted a penalty awarded for handball.

But – in a scrappy second half – Raeside’s team couldn’t find an equaliser and they went down to a demoralising defeat.

The boss added: "If we had Heriot-Watt again this Saturday I’d be really confident about going and taking the three points.

"There’s no doubt we suffered from rustiness early on. It’s been a horrible couple of months with missing games due to postponements and we hadn’t had a competitive game for three weeks before Heriot-Watt.”

But then it was all change in midweek as Saints hammered Lochore.

Lewis Sawers’ fourth-minute shot opened the floodgates, before Owen Andrew’s header, Kyle Sneddon’s double and Lewis Payne’s header made it 5-0 by half-time.

Andrew made it 6-0 before Lochore pulled one back with Joe Kirby’s 64th-minute lob over Calum Brodie.

Normal service was then resumed as Scott Small’s own goal and Scott Reekie’s close range effort made it 8-1.

Boss Raeside added: "Scoring eight doesn’t happen often and the performance was that good it could have been more.

"It was fantastic. We were really good and Lochore are not as bad a team as that result reflects.

"We were just excellent, in the first half especially. There was some great football and we changed it a wee bit, went a wee bit more positive in our formation as I felt we had to have a go as draws are no good to us any more, we need to try and win.”

Saints are fourth with 36 points from 17 games – six points behind third-placed Newtongrange Star and the promotion places with four matches in hand – ahead of this Saturday’s league trip to Arniston Rangers which kicks off at 2.30pm.

“Our camp is buoyant going into the Arniston game,” Raeside said. "We are looking forward to it.

"I think the win over Lochore was just what we needed. We managed to get everyone on and everybody contributed.

"We just needed to get the shackles off and go and play, we did and we’re looking forward to doing that on Saturday. We’re raring to go and just looking forward to having games.”