Burgh Lose Tempo With Whitburn's ‘beat’

A heavily depleted and down-to-the-bare-bones Newburgh travelled to Central Park, Whitburn, with an ominous feeling missing eight first team players such as top scorer Kellar Harris, Rory Marshall, Jamie Gay, David Byrne, Josh Doyle, Struan Grieve, Ronan Hall and Johnny Malcolm – mostly through injuries.

Despite this, it was actually the visitors Burgh that started off brightest with Harris Mitchell having a shot well saved by the home keeper Potts who recovered quickly to deny Hamid Eddouss’s follow up.

From the resultant corner from Andrew Reade, Michael Perrie met the cross to head home from close range to give Newburgh a 9th minute unlikely lead.

It was short-lived, though, and from the moment Crawford netted Whitburn’s equaliser in the 21st minute you felt there was only going to be only one winner. Crawford and Henderson both had good chances before Thomson made it 2-1 after a great save by David Chalmers from Liddell saw the loose ball lofted home.

Chalmers did well to tip a powerful Liddell header onto the bar in the 42nd minute before Crawford netted his second and Whitburn’s third just before half time with a well-taken volley at the far post after a cross from the right by McGarahan.

Realistically the game was over by half time but the hosts weren’t finished and within 5 minutes of the second period Crawford completed his hat-trick rolling home after Thomson’s effort was blocked. On 56 minutes it was 5-1 when Maguire beat Chalmers to a ball into the edge of the Burgh area to head home into an exposed net.

Burgh were still trying to play for pride and Reade had the visitors best chance of the second half bringing a save from Potts to his left in the 58th minute.

Liddell finished the scoring for Whitburn on 61 minutes picking up a loose ball to smash home from close range. The hosts had a number of chances to increase their advantage but the score remained 6-1.

On the face of it, it was always going to be a very difficult fixture even with a full-strength team. But with a severely weakened team it was always going to be an uphill battle. But the performance and work-rate needs to be much higher and individual mistakes need to be eradicated to avoid this kind of result.