15th Feb 2025 Raith Rovers 3 Partick Thistle 0 (SPFL Championship - game 25)

matches:2024-25: ← 31game 3233 →

	Barry Robson	Kris Doolan	38y, 2m, 4d

		Kyle Turner; Aidan Fitzpatrick
		Ben Stanway; Brian Graham

Finlay Pollock (0-1, 8‎ mins); Finlay Pollock (0-2, 26 mins); Dylan Easton (0-3, pen 62 mins)‎
none (0-1, 8‎ mins); Dylan Easton (0-2, 26 mins); none (0-3, pen 62 mins)‎
Scott Brown; Ross Matthews‎		Daniel O'Reilly; Scott Martin; Robbie Crawford; Stuart Bannigan

Dylan Easton (Kai Montagu, 69 mins); James Gullan (Aiden Marsh, 73 mins); Finlay Pollock (Lewis Gibson, 79 mins)		Scott Martin (Josh Reid, HT); Kanayo Megwa (Robbie Crawford, HT); Aidan Fitzpatrick (Zander MacKenzie, 65 mins); Stuart Bannigan (Ben Stanway, 65 mins); Kyle Turner (Aaron Muirhead, 86 mins)

	Josh Rae	David Mitchell	34y, 10m, 11d
	Josh Mullin	Kanayo Megwa	20y, 11m, 10d
	Lewis Stevenson	Daniel O'Reilly	29y, 10m, 4d
	Liam Dick	Luke McBeth	25y, 5m, 6d
	Paul Hanlon	Lee Ashcroft	31y, 5m, 17d
	Jordan Doherty	Stuart Bannigan	32y, 4m, 29d
	Scott Brown	Scott Martin	27y, 10m, 14d
	Ross Matthews	Logan Chalmers	24y, 10m, 22d
	Jamie Gullan	Terry Ablade	23y, 4m, 3d
	Finlay Pollock	Kyle Turner	27y, 3m, 5d
	Dylan Easton	Aidan Fitzpatrick	23y, 10m, 26d

			27y, 5m, 24d

	Kevin Dąbrowski	Luis Cameron	17y, 10m, 5d
	Callum Fordyce	Josh Reid	22y, 9m, 12d
	Euan Murray	Aaron Muirhead	34y, 5m, 16d
	Aidan Connolly	Robbie Crawford	30y, 7m, 24d
	Lewis Gibson	Ben Stanway	20y, 4m, 26d
	Kai Montagu	Zander MacKenzie	19y, 5m, 18d
	Aiden Marsh	Matthew Falconer	17y, 11m, 23d

notes

Both sides generally in playing order.
Both sides filled only 7 of their 9 allocated bench slots.

TTA report

An abject performance. Poor defending let in Rovers twice (8 and 26) and they hit the post just before h-t. Changes at h-t brought no reward and a penalty (pushing, 62) tied things up. The slump in performances since New Year continued. NOT ONE attempt on goal in 90 minutes proved to be a shocking statistic. Doolan sacked 18/2/2025.

TTA man of the match

no award

Media report

15-Feb-2025, raithrovers.net

Raith Rovers closed the gap to fourth place on Saturday after comfortably dispatching Partick Thistle 3-0 at Starks Park. Barry Robson made one change to his starting 11 after last week’s defeat away to Celtic in the Scottish Cup. Finlay Pollock was back into the starting lineup whilst Euan Murray was rotated to the bench. Byrne and Vaughan continued to miss out through injury alongside Gitau, Smith, and Hamilton. Brian Graham’s red card from Partick’s defeat to Falkirk a week earlier meant that the veteran striker couldn’t feature on this occasion as he served his one-match ban. Ben Stanway was also dropped to the bench, with Kyle Turner and Aidan Fitzpatrick both getting the call-up to start.

Partick got the match underway on a chilly afternoon at Starks Park, but it was the home side who would open the scoring not long after. Raith had a sharp start to the match and quickly worked the ball through the team and into Partick’s penalty area. Gullan looked to have been dispossessed, but the ball fell to Finlay Pollock who wasted no time in blasting the ball into the bottom right corner from a tight angle. With just seven minutes on the clock, Raith had the lead. The match turned into a series of aerial battles as both sides defended some high balls. Raith continued to probe Partick’s back line though and eventually found success. In the 25th minute, Raith recycled a free kick into Partick’s box and worked the ball to Dylan Easton on the left side of the area. The Rovers’ showman drove towards the by-line and curled a ball across the face of goal which evaded Mitchell’s diving effort to palm away. Pollock did well to beat his man and got the vital touch to put the ball away from close range to get his second of the afternoon. A few minutes later, Partick found themselves through on goal and the whistle went after a coming together in the box between Rae and Ablade. Much to the home fans’ relief, the offside flag had been raised. Raith continued to cause the Partick defence trouble as they finished the half strong. Scott Brown, having already had a couple of promising efforts on goal from long range blocked, couldn’t have come closer as he curled a 20-yard shot onto the post. The halftime whistle went around five minutes later.

Kris Doolan made two changes during the interval as he looked to put a dent in Raith’s two goal lead, with Reid and Crawford replacing Megwa and Martin. Raith kept up the forward pressure into the second half and won a corner around the hour mark after Mitchell missed a tame back-pass just few yards wide of his goal. The afternoon’s referee, Lloyd Wilson, had a word with Gullan and Bannigan before the corner was taken. Bannigan didn’t back down and received a yellow card for his efforts, and seconds later when the ball was swung into the box, Bannigan brought Gullan down inside the area. Penalty Rovers. Easton stepped up to take. Mitchell got close as he dived down to his right, but the ball still found it’s way into the net – giving Raith their third of the match with just under half an hour left. Having avoided a second yellow after the foul for the penalty and the resultant afters, Bannigan was substituted off alongside Fitzpatrick as Stanway and Mackenzie took their places. Raith made some changes of their own a short while later, with Easton, Gullan, and Pollock making way for Montagu, Marsh, and Gibson in a spread-out series of substitutions. Raith fashioned a few more promising chances as the full-time whistle drew near, but each move broke down at the final ball and the match ended with Raith three goals to the good. Such a result rewards Raith with a vital three points, which pushes them up to fifth in the table and six points behind Partick with two games in hand. Next up, Raith welcome eighth-placed Hamilton at Starks Park this Saturday as they look to keep up their push for fourth place.

Reaction

It was a haunted Partick Thistle manager Kris Doolan who spoke to Jagzone:

There's nobody can tell me they played well today or they're ok; individually and collectively we were poor, with and without the ball. You can't have too many days like that, that's just not acceptable for us. We lose an early goal but I would expect to see a reaction after that as there's a lot of the game still to go but we never showed, we tried to get it out of them but just didn't get that type of reaction. I don't think we had any shots on target, yes you're missing Brian Graham, you're missing Stevie Lawless, but ultimately we've still got people on there who can create and score goals. We never looked like a threat and never got out of first gear from the start. A really sore one for everybody, we need to apologize to the fans, it's a cold day to travel, a long way to come and we gave them absolutely nothing to warrant them turning up today. As much as we prepare and we try and do everything we possibly can, we need to look at everything I think to try and make sure that doesn't happen again.

Barry Robson was pleased with the display put in by his side, telling Raith TV afterwards:

In the first half, we were outstanding in the way we transitioned, the way we passed the ball through them quickly, the speed we played at and our counter-pressure. We were hard to deal with. You could see a real identity to us. That’s how aggressive we want to be. I thought we were really, really pleasing in the first half. In the second half, we controlled the game well. We kept them to a minimum of chances and kept a clean sheet, so we were pretty much in control in the second half as well. We’re a handful when we get it right and we press right and we pass the ball right, passing it forward and playing diagonal passes, and we try to be aggressive with our defensive line. It’s all of those types of things and I thought today we got most of it right. You could see the excitement from the players and you could see the excitement from the fans about how we wanted to attack continuously, so it was a good afternoon for us and I think the players deserve a lot of credit for that. We’re really pleased but we don’t get carried away. We’ve had some really good performances and you’ve seen a real way that we want to be over the last couple of weeks, but we need to keep it going. We need to try and build a bit of consistency. I’m starting to see that in the way we’ve played but we also need to get consistency with results.

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