Yesterday’s encounter between Motherwell and Ross County was a test of a football reporter’s resolve to avoid falling into clichés. By the end though, there was really no other way to sum up the match than as a classic game of two halves.

Stephen Robinson described the opening period as the worst half of football his side had produced since he came to the club, while Jim McIntyre said County had rarely played better. And yet, it was Motherwell who ended the day with the spoils.

A microcosm of County’s dominance in the opening 45 minutes was the duel between home right-back Richard Tait and visiting winger Michael Gardyne. Gardyne, like so many of his teammates elsewhere on the field, was absolutely all over his direct opponent in one of the most one-sided affairs since my childhood crush on Mariah Carey.

In Tait’s defence, he was playing while carrying a pelvic injury, but his recovery will hardly have been helped by his legs being tied in knots by his livewire opponent in a torrid opening half.

The best you could say for Motherwell at half-time was that they weren’t behind, and County would regret their inability to create anything clear-cut when they were so on top. Tait was granted mercy by being shifted over to the left, and lo and behold, who pops up with the opening goal a few minutes later? You guessed it. A Cadden cross looked to be meat and drink to Andrew Davies, but he allowed the skidding ball to deceive him and get through to Tait, who tucked it home. It really is a funny old game.

By the time Louis Moult had wrapped up the first three points of the season for Motherwell from the penalty spot, Tait was pirouetting away from opponents in the middle of the park as Gardyne was tucked safely inside Chris Cadden’s pocket. The full-back deserves great credit for his response to his shocker of an opening period.

“Richard was beating himself up, but that’s the character,” said his manager Robinson.

“He had a poor first half, as did ten other players, but he picked himself up and showed great character.”

As Robinson said, the resolve of Motherwell after the break was to be admired as much as the slick, dominant display by County before it.

The Steelmen were still without the width provided by the injured Elliott Frear, and they never got to grips with the initial 4-2-3-1 set-up with Craig Tanner trying to provide support to lone frontman Moult.

County went with three at the back, with Jim O’Brien coming in to the midfield to face his old club in place of Ross Draper, but he lasted barely quarter of an hour before limping from the action with a hamstring injury. Andrew Davies would later follow with a similar complaint.

There wasn’t a lot happening early on as both teams huffed and puffed in the swirling wind and rain so characteristic of a summer’s afternoon in Lanarkshire.

But it was the visitors who took control, their best chance coming from a fine passing move down the right that ended with Jason Naismith’s low cross finding Gardyne arriving around the back to draw a fine save from Russell Griffiths.

For all that County were showing far more sharpness than the home side, getting to the ball a yard quicker and snapping into tackles, they will be disappointed that they didn’t translate their dominance into at least the one goal.

“Some of our stuff was fantastic,” said County boss McIntyre. “We dominated the game but you’ve got to take your opportunities when they come along and we were wasteful in the final third.

“It came back to bite us, big time.”

By Robinson’s manner on the touchline, the air in the home dressing room would have been bluer than the shivering short-sleeved County supporters to the left of the main stand, who erroneously presumed that the temperature in Motherwell in August might be in double digits.

But the alteration of the flow of the game owed more to both of Robinson's half-time substitutes, Ryan Bowman and Alan Campbell. Bowman connected well with the hitherto isolated Moult, while Campbell buzzed around midfield and won tackles, preventing County from settling on the ball.

Tait’s goal got the Motherwell players' tails up, but County should have levelled when Naismith played in Alex Schalk, the forward blazing over when clean through on Griffiths.

When the careless Van der Weg bundled over Moult to let the striker bag his first league goal of the season from the spot, being sent off in the process, Motherwell had gone from bawling each other out to breaking out the cigars.