After another ‘week off’ from football, it was time to return to WoSFL Division 4 to visit another of this season’s new boys. This week, this meant journeying to Kilwinning to see Eglinton host Rossvale Academy.
Eglinton are a brand new side, born out of Kilwinning Sports Club. They had a team (Kilwinning Rangers AFC) in the amateur league in 2021/22 but have now taken on the name of a former Kilwinning-based junior side, who folded in 1936, as they move up to the WoSFL.
They even have a brand spanking new nickname of ‘the jousters’ which apparently comes from the ‘famous’ Eglinton Tournament which took place in 1839. Plenty of history for a newborn side.
Form
After three league games to date, the hosts propped up the 12 team league in bottom place having lost all three games and shipping 12 goals in the process. Rossvale had won 2 and lost 1 of their games which saw them in 5th place at the start of the day. I predicted a comfortable 0 – 4 win for the away side.
Once again, the Satnav tried to educate me that a postcode covers a wider area than a single address but I still managed to get to Kilwinning Sports Club in plenty of time for kick off. After experiencing a sense of deja vu as I got out of the car (the sports club also plays host to Kilwinning Rangers’, Buffs Park, which I have visited before) I made my way to the Ian Cashmore Memorial Park, the AstroTurf pitch alongside which Eglinton call home.
The ground is nothing to write home about, a plastic surface with standing room along one side and dugouts on the other, but my money was taken by a couple of very friendly ladies who didn’t charge me again when I walked back from a trip up the slope to the sports club building in search of refreshment.
The Match
The first half lived up to a friend’s comments that I was scraping the barrel by coming to another Division 4 game. There was little quality on show except from a very neat chipped finish which gave Rossvale the lead on the half hour mark. In fact, the only other memorable thing that happened in the 45 was a header off the line late on which prevented the lead from being doubled.
The game on an adjacent pitch sounded like it may have been more interesting and the number of cheers I heard suggested a high scoring game.
Six minutes into the second half, Eglinton found an equaliser and a minute later they had turned the game on its head with a second goal. While no one could add to that, the home side could (should) have scored a third right at the death and they fully deserved their win based on their second half performance.
FT: Eglinton 2 Rossvale Academy 1
So much for my pre-match prediction. A first 3 points of the season saw Eglinton move up two places to 10th in the league and give them a little confidence for the rest of the season.
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