The curtain came up on the inaugural Scottish Championship and Queen of the South sent out a warning to the rest of the division with a 4-3 win over league favourites Dundee FC at Palmerston Park.
The first league fixture of the season saw plenty of goals and bodes well for the season to come. It was Dundee who opened the scoring after just 7 minutes as Peter MacDonald curled the ball past Calum Antell. Queens slowly worked their way back into the match and equalised through Derek Lyle`s header moments before half-time. The first half gave no hints of what was to come in the second half though as Queens ran riot in a hectic 15 minutes spell, scoring three times through Ryan McGuffie`s penalty on 59 minutes, Iain Russell`s sweet volley on 63 and Michael Paton`s low effort after 70 minutes. Dundee fought their way back into the game with late scrambled goals through Declan Gallacher and Iain Davidson but Queens held on for a deserved victory.
Queens manager Jim McIntyre said: “Although we felt that we created good goalscoring opportunities in the first half we hadn`t passed the ball as well as we can and we needed to get back to that. I think every one of the players picked it up and started really well [in the second half] and I thought we were devastating for fifteen minutes.
“We had good goalscoring opportunities in the first half as well as the second and I thought we were really dangerous in the wider areas and I thought Lyle up front led the line superbly.”
Queens looked rather shaky towards the end of the match but McIntyre was happy to grab the three points.
“The goalkeeper`s clearly made a mistake but he made a save last week that we went on to win the game from. That happens, he`s a young `keeper and he`ll learn from it but it`s important that we react in the right manner and we did that. We were hanging on a bit at the end there. Again it`s something we`ll learn from and hopefully see out games better in the future.
“I think Dundee are most bookies favourites and I can understand why because they have got very good players and John Brown did a great job last year so for us to draw them in the first game it`s the type of game that you get promoted for - you want to play against the biggest teams. To get them at home and to get a winning start is great but it`s only three points and it`s on to Livingston next week.”
New signing Iain Russell capped his man of the match performance with a well-taken goal: “I enjoyed it today. I`m just trying to do my bit for the team, to work as hard as I can and the manager`s been good to me since he came in. I was obviously Alan Johnston`s signing so the new manager has been great with me, very positive, and trying to give me a wee bit of confidence so that only helps.
“Delighted to score, I love scoring goals, it`s my favourite part of the game so I`m delighted to get a wee goal myself but it`s the old cliché: it`s all about the result but obviously if you can score with that it’s great as well.”