First of all, I'd just like to apologise for the lack of my blog last week - hopefully there were a few of you who actually missed it!
The name of Annan Athletic will be pulled out of the hat for the third-round draw of the Scottish Cup on Thursday afternoon.
Everyone at the club is delighted to still be in the competition but that's about the only positive the boys have taken from Saturday's performance. Don't get me wrong, we were never in any danger of losing the match.
We controlled the game in terms of possession but we were very disappointed in ourselves in terms of creating chances, especially in the second half.
Annan will be without captain Kevin Neilson for their Scottish Cup replay with Preston Athletic. Photo: SNS
You have to give massive credit to Preston Athletic for their performance in the match. They were harshly reduced to 10 men within half an hour but restricted us to very few chances and even created a couple of half chances themselves.
They were a very organised unit and, after speaking to their manager, Stevie Myatt, he is expecting their squad to be stronger for the replay so by no means should any of us be taking the result of the replay as a formality.
I, for one, won't be paying any attention to the third-round draw until Saturday is out of the way.
Whereas Preston will have players back who missed the original tie, we will be without our captain, Kevin Neilson, for the replay. Big Nelly is going in to hospital to have his metal plate removed from a facial injury he received in a work accident a few months back.
This obviously means that the manager and Andy Aitken have at least one enforced change to make. I'm sure we would all rather have our captain in the team but we're in the fortunate position of being quite strong in that area so there are plenty of options available to Harry and Andy that shouldn't disrupt things too much.
A few of the boys who played on Saturday had the chance to get it out of their system when we faced Queen of the South in a reserve game at Palmerston on Tuesday night. We fielded quite a strong side in the game and got ourselves a 2-2 draw after last week's disappointing result against Partick Thistle.
We just about managed to put a full team out who all had first-team experience, with the exception of two under-19s in Callum West and Patrick Slattery. It was probably just as well because Queens themselves had five of their first team involved in the game.
I'm hoping for a double celebration this weekend to go along with a win in the Scottish Cup. It's our yearly jaunt to Carlisle Racecourse on Sunday afternoon along with a few of my friends and our partners.
I'm not one for gambling at all so I save it all up for this weekend. Hopefully the boys have a few tips for me, otherwise it will be left to my girlfriend Laura to pick the winners. Laura normally makes her choices either by the name she likes or by the fanciest outfit worn by the jockey so I won't be getting my hopes up!
As much as it would be nice to pick up a few bob winning on the horses I'll definitely settle for the win bonus against Preston Athletic on Saturday afternoon.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/chrisjardine/2010/10/cup_replay_against_preston_ath.html
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