25th Jul 1998 Partick Thistle 0 Le Havre 3 (Friendly)

matches:1998-99: ← 03game 0405 →

Match Information

38y, 5m, 28d			Tommy Bryce		Denis Troch
Kenny Arthur; David Kennedy; Scott McArthur; Alan Archibald; Graham Connell; Martin Lauchlan
Stevie Ross; Jamie McKenzie; Kevin McCann; Trialist; Robert Dunn; Mark Donaghy
					Lionel Prat (0-1, 21 mins); Christophe Horlaville (0-2, 65 mins); Lionel Prat (0-3, 82 mins)
Alan Morgan (Robert Dunn, 70 mins); Sammy Johnston (Mark Donaghy, 70 mins)					Marinos Ouzunidis (Jean-Pierre Delaunay, 48 mins); Jérémy Henin (Mathieu Louis-Jean, 55 mins); Nicolas Weber (Džoni Novak, 55 mins); Milinko Pantić (Oumar Sané, 60 mins); Nicolas Huysman (Mohamed Sylla, 70 mins)
19y, 7m, 18d			Kenny Arthur		Stéphane Cassard
31y, 9m, 18d			David Kennedy		Nicolas Weber
30y, 4m, 27d			Scott McArthur		Ludovic Pollet
35y, 2m, 28d			Willie Jamieson		Nicolas Huysman
20y, 7m, 12d			Alan Archibald		Thierry De Neef
23y, 8m, 24d			Graham Connell		Milinko Pantić
17y, 9m, 24d			Martin Lauchlan		Christophe Horlaville
38y, 5m, 28d			Tommy Bryce		Yann Soloy
31y, 4m, 2d			Willie Callaghan		Marinos Ouzunidis
23y, 7m, 15d			Alan Morgan		Lionel Prat
31y, 3m, 12d			Sammy Johnston		Jérémy Henin
27y, 7m, 19d
19y, 0m, 27d			Robert Dunn		Džoni Novak
25y, 10m, 26d			Mark Donaghy		Mohamed Sylla
			?		Oumar Sané
					Jean-Pierre Delaunay
					Mathieu Louis-Jean

Match Report

TTA report

Le Havre out-played, out-passed and out-thought Thistle who didn't play that badly but were always second best. Arthur had already saved well several times before a defensive error led to a lob for 1-0 (21). Few shots on target came Thistle's way. They were caught on the break (65) before a fine 3rd (82).

Media report

27-Jul-1998, The Herald

THISTLE STUNG BY FLAIR OF FRENCH. AT this end of the twentieth century, in the age of the Channel Tunnel and package holidays to Peru, we may live in an ever shrinking world. However, for Thistle fans Europe, at any rate, must seem to be receding into the distance. European glory nights at Firhill, admittedly even in the seventies rarely too glorious, can only have faded further into memory in the wake of last season's traumas and the prospect of visits to Methil and Inverness in the coming one. Saturday's friendly visit by Le Havre therefore allowed the Jags to dream a little, though as the French first-division side proceeded to out-play, out-pass, and out-think their Scottish opposition, there must have been times when that dream verged on nightmare. “We knew it was going to be difficult,” Thistle player-manager Tommy Bryce conceded at the end of his disappointing home debut. “They're sitting in the middle of the French first division, so they are obviously a good side.” Quite how good they are was hard to judge on an afternoon in which Thistle never looked like ruffling their Gallic savoir-faire.

It took the Jags 50 minutes to get their first shot on target and even that was in reality a mishit cross from Martin Lauchlan. Five minutes later the same player did force a save from Stephane Cassard with a legitimate shot, but that proved to be one of the afternoon's few genuine assaults on Le Havre's goal and within 10 minutes the French had sealed victory with their second goal of the game. Mobile and technically gifted, Le Havre had controlled affairs in the first half, peppering Kenny Arthur's goal with shots from all distances as the French strikers found their range. Twenty-one minutes in, they inevitably took the lead when Lionel Prat, latching on to a pass from Milinko Pantic, took just one touch to beat Arthur. It was a chance that surfaced as a result of a weak headed pass back from Scott McArthur and a Thistle defensive error also led to Prat's second, eight minutes from time, when David Kennedy was guilty of losing the ball. That allowed Christophe Horlaville to set Prat up to volley home. Horlaville himself had claimed Le Havre's second.

If, in the end, the game was something of a mismatch, the Thistle manager was still positive about the experience. “I hope we learned quite a few things today. The fact is that if we give the ball away far too easily then there's a helluva lot of hard work to get it back against teams like that and it'll be the same in the second division.” To be fair, given the wholesale changes to the Thistle playing staff in the close season - Scott McArthur and Graham Connell are the latest signings - a measure of disjointedness in their performance was only to be expected. That will surely even out and, if nothing else, the challenges of the second division are likely to be rather more divergent than those offered by Le Havre, as Bryce readily admitted. “It will be totally different,” he said. “For a start, there won't be as much football played by opposing teams.”

Scrapbook

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PTFC Match Programme, 4th August, 1998

Stats Watch

● 30-year-old Scott McArthur makes his Thistle debut.

ongoing sequences:

● 39 consecutive competitive appearances for Jimmy Boyle, 2nd Aug 1997 to date, a new personal best. (Longest run since: David Farrell - 40 games, 12th Oct 1996 to 18th Oct 1997. Club-record: Johnny Jackson - 313 games, 28th Aug 1926 to 25th Mar 1933.)

Stats Watch adheres to our stated definitions of League, League Max, Major Competitive, Competitive or All Games. Where there is no written qualification, you should presume that the Stat in question is compiled from the All Games criteria.

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