Saturday 21 July 2012

Berwick Rangers 2 - 1 Livingston

Our final warm-up friendly ended in a disappointing defeat at sunny Shielfield Park as a double from Berwick's Lee Currie earned his side victory.

The Berwickers started better against a strong Lions side, pressing high up the pitch in a bid to stifle our short passing game.

We eventually settled and started to string passes together but we lacked the attacking threat which had been in evidence against Kilmarnock last week.

Bobby Barr produced our best effort of the first half, but Berwick's imposing goalkeeper Yousef Bejaoui made the save.

Goalless at the interval, Berwick produced two goals within eight minutes of the restart, both well taken by Lee Currie.

The first saw him given too much space on our right hand side, and he blasted past McNeil with power, the Livi keeper getting fingertips to the ball on its way into the roof of the net.

Four minutes later the same player produced another well struck finish, this time an unstoppable volley from inside the penalty area.

We played some of our best stuff after going two goals down, although many of our more promising moves came to a premature end with a misplaced pass.

We did managed to create chances though, Marc McNulty hitting the top of the bar with one after manufacturing himself a shooting opportunity from close range.

Tony Andreu later tested Bajaoui from distance and although the keeper parried his shot, none of our players was close enough to mop up the rebound.

A goal did eventually come with McNulty firing the ball home in typically predatory style from six yards out, but we were unable to find an equaliser in the remaining fifteen minutes or so.

Livingston: McNeil, McCann, Fordyce (McDonald 68), Watson (Docherty 75), C Barr, Andreu (Cummings 83), B Barr, I Russell (Downie 83), McNulty, Scougall, Morton (Beaumont 60).