Match Preview: Cowdenbeath v QoS

A busy March kicks off with the visit of Queen of the South to Central Park this Tuesday night (kick off 7.45pm). The Blue Brazil will play 9 games (a quarter of the season) over the next 31 potentially season defining days and will be looking to get off to a flying start tomorrow night against a very good Queen of the South side.

*Please note that all fans should enter from the High Street turnstyles for this game.

"We have a very important month coming up and start it with two crucial games against Queen of the South and Stirling Albion on Saturday", said Jimmy Nicholl.

"I watched the two of them in action last weekend and was impressed by both teams. Kenny Brannigan's team are first up and we know from our previous two encounters how good a side they are. However, if we create the amount of chances we did on Saturday and show the same spirit we can give anyone in this division a game.

"I don't accept defeat but I was heartened by the performance against Falkirk last weekend, particulary in the 2nd half. Falkirk came out of the traps at the start of the game so we had to chase the game but the boys stuck in there. Even when Falkirk scored their 2nd the heads did not go down and, in fact, had we taken our chances we might have come away with a result."

Cowden trained on Monday night and Nicholl was pleased that the squad turned up injury free from the weekend. Kenny Adamson picked up an ankle injury in the warm up on Saturday and had to be replaced after only 20 minutes but is fit for Tuesday.

Our opponents sit a highly respectable 4th in the league table with 10 more points than ourselves which underlines quite how difficult a game this will be. With the two sides suffering defeats at the weekend both will be looking to return to winning ways as soon as possible - Cowden need points to try and avoid the relegation places while Queens will be looking to ensure that they can't be sucked
back into the mid-table battle. 

The 2 sides have met twice this season already with 2 wins for Queens: 3-1 at Central Park and 3-0 at Palmerston. Our most recent victory over them was away back in 2001 where a Graeme Brown hat-trick sealed a 3-1 win.
 
If Cowden are to survive in the 1st then our form at Central Park is going to have to improve with only 2 points gathered from our recent outings - gaining more points in this match will prove to be tough with The Doonhamers picking up 10 points from their past 5 away league matches. A worrying sign for Cowden fans is the lack of goals scored by the team in 2011 - in our opening 6 games this year we've scored 2 goals (one own-goal and the other a penalty) and we have to go even further back to our fantastic 5-1 win over Stirling Albion at the start of November to find the last time a Cowden player scored from open play.
 
Our results on this day over the years have given little cheer. are In 2003 we battled to a 2-2 draw at home to Forfar Athletic - Ian Mauchlen scored a first half penalty before an early own goal from Rattray in the 2nd half put us 2 up - disaster struck when Hodge pulled a goal back in the 67th minute and despite Rattray seeing red in the 89th minute we dropped 2 points when Paul Tosh fired home an undeserved equaliser for the 10 men.  In 2008 we lost a pulsating Fife derby in Kirkcaldy by 3 goals to 2.  Raith were 2 up through Goodwillie and Davidson before Chris Fahey flapped at a cross to gift us a way back into the match (own goals in our favour seem common on this day!).  The 2nd half was dominated by The Blue Brazil who grabbed an equaliser through Paul McQuade.  Somehow Raith snatched a winner through Davidson again as Cowden headed for relegation through the play-offs.
 
Match of the day fact of the week: Sadly Cowden now sit second bottom of the average goals conceded per game table in Scotland only ahead of Stirling Albion. On average we concede 2.23 goals a game (Queen of the South concede 1.4) and score just 1.04 a game (putting us 34th in Scotland just above Hibs!)