The Slow Match Report: Motherwell 2 St Mirren 2
For all its imperfections, football is still the ultimate escape from life’s grind, banality and calls for the return of corporal punishment
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Outside Motherwell station, the boy wearing a St Mirren scarf scampered to catch up with his father. When you’re a child, no mammal is faster than a dad on his way somewhere. “There’s ages till kick-off,” remonstrated the kid to selectively deaf ears. You could tell that the dad wanted to be early, wanted to get a programme, to buy pies before the away end hatch had run out and most of all to watch the warm-up with his son. Deep in our hearts, we all know that these sainted matchday rituals are finite. Routines change, sons grow and push turnstiles for themselves.
Crisp, promising spring had arrived in Lanarkshire. Daffodils swayed gently beneath a sky of merry blue and the ardent sun surely singed optimism into even the darkest heart. Then three teenage lads in balaclavas hurtled along pedestrianised Brandon Parade on motorbikes. “They should bring back birching,” said one old man outside Best Wishes Cards & Gifts, somewhat specifically. It reminded me of the time I’d been on a train to Sheffield when a lady reading about some heinous crime in a tabloid newspaper had remarked of its perpetrator, “They should hang him and throw away the key.”
Up at Fir Park, matchday was bustling along in its cheery cocoon, far removed from menacing wheels and the world’s ills. In claret and amber, and black and white, pals and families marched to their gates with ten-to-three smiles. They talked not of the news but of team changes and accumulator bets. Football is a shelter, Saturday a haven.
The game began, Motherwell’s ever-magnificent colour scheme up against the corner-shop-plastic-bag blue of St Mirren’s away kit. Through the opening minutes, the away side dominated, passing slickly in neat triangles as if enacting a training manual for a coaching video. Breaking the mould, Buddies forward Jonah Ayunga played in teammate Ryan Alebiosu but the wing-back skewed his shot. The ball entered a storage area beneath a floodlight, possibly disturbing a janitor toiling with last night’s Wordle, fag in mouth.
Quiet engulfed the main stand and it was pierced only by the strange plinking of three portentous piano key sounds over the Tannoy, a phrase repeated three further times over the next couple of minutes. I recalled suddenly the date and wondered if this unnerving occurrence was a musical manifestation of the Ides of March. Then it happened for a fifth time and finally a voice asked someone to move their Volvo as it was blocking an adjacent driveway.
The Steelmen awoke and began to dash forward on the break. Luke Plange skipped free but suddenly seemed to lose interest in the ball, as if his mum had appeared and called him in for tea. Then, at the other end, frontman Toyosi Olusanya scuttled into the box, danced a circle around the ball and prodded it backwards to Caolan Boyd-Munce. The midfielder curved a shot towards the left-hand post which was rerouted into the right of the net by Well defender Stephen O’Donnell’s hapless forehead. Up in the top tier of the Tommy McLean Stand a thousand Paisley wayfarers jumped in glee. “Terrible,” cried a voice from behind me. “It’s no’ terrible,” replied another, “it’s shite.”
Soon, he would have need for a higher degree of expletive as Killian Phillips doubled St Mirren’s lead with a sparkling strike. Roosted on the edge of the penalty area, Phillips cushioned a headed clearance with his chest. Before the ball met the turf, he pirouetted electrically and, seeming for a second to horizontally levitate, pounded a volley home. It was the kind of artful goal which explains in three seconds this sport’s popularity and universality. You could have known nothing about football but appreciated its beauty.
Yet – and here is another of the game’s great tricks – only 90 seconds later Phillips’ majesty was temporarily overshadowed. An almighty clearance from Motherwell keeper Ellery Balcombe landed deep in St Mirren territory, troubling low-socked warrior Alex Gogić. Home forward Callum Slattery niggled, connived and conjured his way towards goal, then finished deliciously with the outside of his foot. His shot seemed to bolt into the net in the manner of a table football ball thrashed in anger by a combusting little brother.
Through the first twenty minutes of the second half, Motherwell’s pursuit of an equaliser alternated between the half-hearted and the incompetent. Many passes went straight out of play. One from O’Donnell slapped a teammate’s back as if trying to encourage him. The Steelmen were not so much chasing the game as limping gammily after it. Their feeble efforts meant that Slattery’s second goal was something of a pleasant surprise, like finding a pound coin left in a supermarket trolley lock. Once again, the Well man putted the ball beyond Zach Hemming with zeal.
There remained time for either side to compose a winning goal. Instead, they lapsed into the quiet contentment of a long marriage with its weary half-hearted squabbles. Goal threats were few and players passed frequently to opponents. Olusanya startled us all for a moment, finding enough enthusiasm to bundle his way into a red card for a second bookable offence. The referee’s decision seemed rude, almost, as if he’d turned up at a care home tea dance with an eight pack of Blackthorn cider.
Fourteen minutes of added time were announced, the legacy of a worrying head injury to goalscorer Boyd-Munce. Around me, supporters began to list things they’d now be late for or even miss, a Butterfly Effect only with more mentions of chippy queues and trains to Whifflet.
The two final acts of what now felt like an abandoned ship of a match were a St Mirren free-kick that struck the Motherwell wall, and a follow-up corner that went straight out of play. Nobody really minded, though, because for two hours nothing had existed apart from wonderful, preposterous football.
