ARTIFICIAL pitches have taken root in Scottish football even if acceptance of them has not often been as easy to cultivate.
The days when you might have got skreeved knees or a friction burn for attempting a slide tackle are now gone but the surfaces are still proving abrasive, the one at Palmerston having become a particular sore point for St Mirren. A replay in the fourth round of the William Hill Scottish Cup was not likely to bring much of the swelling down on Saturday.
The weekend would be the third time this year that St Mirren had set foot in Dumfries and they treaded a familiar line afterwards. There was disappointment in the result - the Paisley side had lost to Queen of the South in pre-season and the Scottish League Cup already - and Danny Lennon would prove to be similarly dissatisfied with the pitch, the St Mirren manager describing it as a "difficult surface" and intimating that the home side had held an advantage as a result. Queens have won just six times at Palmerston this season.
It is a curious truth about many of the arguments against synthetic surfaces that they seldom seem natural themselves, since the loudest criticism tends to follow a meek result. Lennon's side had been made to look uncomfortable at times against a team which is just six points off the bottom of the SPFL Championship but the cardinal concern for St Mirren would be an inability to quell their hosts after going ahead. Early goals in either half might have knocked Queens off their stride had they not been allowed the time to regain their footing in the tie.
The pitch at Palmerston is imperfect - the Dumfries club has spent this season tending to it with the wrong kind of brushes - but bemoaning it as an obstacle to cup ambitions would seem a little like sweeping other problems under the rug. A plastic one, presumably. "This one is meant to be the top of the tree in terms of 3G surfaces but I still don't like it," said Darren McGregor, the St Mirren defender, whose concerns have become entrenched as a result of two serious knee injuries.
"But the pitch wasn't to blame [on Saturday]. This has been our bogey team - we can't seem to beat them - and they are good in all the right areas, they are quick and they countered us really well. We did have opportunities to kill the game off. I had one rush of blood to the head with another and instead of going with my left I've gone with my right and it went round the post.
"That could have put the game to bed and they came back. They are resilient and probably deserved the draw. It's a tough one because I don't know if us scoring maybe gives them a kick up the backside and then they come on to us. It's a hard one to analyse but as soon as we scored we did seem to take our foot off the pedal."
That would influence their draw with Queens but it has not been allowed to inform the Paisley side's more recent league results. St Mirren have crept up to eighth place in the Premiership table after losing only once in their last seven matches - with that blemish perhaps easier to ignore given that it came against Dundee United. Queens would not be quite as vibrant on Saturday, but they produced a performance which was still coloured by persistence and a certain impertinence.
Michael Paton had stuck his tongue out at St Mirren when he scored decisively in the earlier League Cup tie and showed a certain cheek on Saturday too, popping up in the six-yard box to gather a knock down and lift a shot over Marian Kello. The Queens forward has been out of favour of late and this was his first start since October, but he would be the popular choice to score if his side are to squeeze into the next round of the competition next week.
Once a precocious youngster at Aberdeen, Paton has shed the blond highlights and kept his best bits. These have not always been evident in an unsteady league campaign but the 24-year-old would seem quite sure of himself on Saturday - an arcing shot late on threatening briefly to replace his usual snarl with a toothy grin.
"I don't know what it is with us and St Mirren but we seem to do well against them," said Derek Lyle, the Queens forward. "They like to play football and so do we. It always seems to be end-to-end stuff when we play them so we've got nothing to fear going to their place. It's a nice stadium but we'll have chances and, hopefully, we can get through to the next round."
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