Linlithgow Rose and Bo’ness United meet in Fife and Lothians cup final

Jun 9 2011 by Judith Tonner, West Lothian Courier

LINLITHGOW Rose are out to finish their season with a flourish by lifting the Fife and Lothians Cup tonight (Thursday).

They take on great rivals Bo’ness United at Prestonfield in a match brought forward from its originally scheduled Saturday date, with the action kicking off at 7.15pm.

It comes just two weeks after Rose saw their East Region Superleague title dream evaporate in a shock home defeat by Bonnyrigg – which allowed Bo’ness to retain the title with a 2-1 win over Tayport last Saturday.

However, Dave Baikie’s side have already beaten the Newtown Park outfit twice this season; 2-1 at home and then 4-0 in a dramatic title development just four weeks ago, courtesy of goals from Adam Nelson, Tommy Coyne, Gordon Herd and Roddy McLennan.

The Rose manager said: “It was obviously disappointing to lose out on the league, but that’s football and we have to be realistic, move on and can’t feel sorry for ourselves.

“We have the opportunity to win a trophy and it’s important to us to do so, especially for the fans; we want to avenge losing out on the league.

“It’s a long time since Linlithgow and Bo’ness played in a cup final and it will be an interesting battle and a hard game. Bo’ness are a very strong side and having won the league, will go into the game with a lot of confidence; but we’ve played them twice this season and beaten them.”

Rose reached the final courtesy of victories over Thornton, St Andrews, Bathgate and Broxburn, while Bo’ness’ route to the decider concluded with a penalty shoot-out win over Penicuik in last four.

The Prestonfield side are still severely affected ahead of their final game of 2010-2011 by personnel issues, particularly in defence, which manager Baikie says was a major contributing factor in the loss of the league title.

He said: “I’ll probably have three midfielders at the back for this game because Adam Drummond is cup-tied and centre-backs John Ward and Dario Quinn are both unavailable.

“They’re big losses to the defence as we’re without a lot of players; if we’d had the defence we could have won the league games ago, but inconsistency has been a problem and the fact that we failed to take that opportunity was down to a lack of personnel.

“However, all the players are fired up for this game and they know what they’re being asked to do in the final.

“We had a good win over Bo’ness at their ground recently, but when we beat them 2-1 at home, they certainly deserved a draw if not a win, so I don’t think there will be a particular advantage for us in playing the final at our home ground.

“Everybody is really looking forward to the game, and the change of date hasn’t really affected our preparations, as we trained on Monday and Wednesday.”