ON A weekend when Everton and Liverpool contested a fiery derby that raged in front of 40,000 fans, David Raven must have felt a lot more than 377 miles from home.
The Liverpudlian, who began his career at Anfield, was instead involved in a more modest affair as current club Inverness Caledonian Thistle played their part in a draw with St Johnstone that flickered more than flamed in the Highlands. Despite both sides being on impressive unbeaten runs in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League, it took until the last 20 minutes before the match truly ignited as the mercury plummeted.
The experience of performing in front of big crowds is something that has been denied Raven, his three games for Liverpool aside, in his spells with Tranmere Rovers, Shrewsbury Town and Carlisle United. But, with a Scottish Communities League Cup quarter-final at Ibrox on Wednesday to look forward to, the defender is again relishing the prospect.
"You always hope and keep your fingers crossed you can play in these games again," said Raven, who was helpless as David Robertson nodded home in stoppage time to cancel out Billy McKay's strike for Inverness after 73 minutes. "Those are the games you play football for, it's a real buzz and I can't wait for it. I've been looking forward to it ever since the draw was made.
"The gaffer mentioned it just after the game. He said 'That's gone, nothing we can do about it – look forward to Wednesday'. Rangers are not a bad team. They have just been relegated due to their financial situation, so we're expecting a very hard game, and I'm sure they are, too."
On the basis of Saturday's performance, that may not be the case. Despite having lots of the ball, Inverness struggled to show the cutting edge that has sliced through SPL defences of late – Andrew Shinnie blazing over a penalty with the score at 0-0 just one example of their profligacy.
St Johnstone, who tomorrow night face Celtic in the League Cup, will count themselves fortunate that a draw was salvaged from a game that, from the moment Frazer Wright went off after 61 minutes, looked to be slipping away.
As well as the point, St Johnstone manager Steve Lomas can take comfort from the 25 minutes played by striker Steven MacLean. The former Plymouth forward, who in September dislocated an elbow in a win over Dundee, came through unscathed as he aims to return to full fitness.
"It's healed a lot more quickly than first thought; I'm two or three weeks early," said the 30-year-old. "I just remember falling over, the pain was excruciating. I've had a few injuries in my time and that's right up there with the worst. They gave me some morphine but once they put me to sleep and put the elbow back into place the pain went away.
"I went up for a few headers and fell over against Inverness, and it felt good. Touch wood, it will be all right.
"To come away with a point is probably a good result for us. Hopefully we won't play as badly as that again."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article