Queens drew their first pre-season friendly at East Kilbride's K Park facility yesterday. In firey hot conditions, on a sticky pitch, both teams did well to put on a show for a surprisingly big crowd. Queens fielded two entirely different elevens in each half as they sought to give the players some minutes in their legs whilst having a look at a handful of trialists in a match situation. The first half side lined up:

1 Gordon Botterill, 2 Jordan Houston, 3 Trialist, 4 Paul McKay, 5 Lewis Currie, 6 Harry Cochrane, 7 Kieran McKechnie, 8 Reegan Mimnaugh, 9 Gavin Reilly, 10 Lee Connelly, 11 Trialist
Subs: Murray Johnson, Lewis Gibson, Ben Johnstone, Feir Foster & Trialist

The home side fielded a fairly experienced eleven containing a number of manager Mick Kennedy's old Dargavel players, as well as some well known faces including former QoS players Andy Stirling and Callum Tapping, though neither started.

Queens started brightly and Gavin Reilly should perhaps have done better with an early headed chance before he did open the scoring, beating offside to turn in Lee Connelly's invetive cross. Gradually though the home side worked their way back into the game, making particular gains down their right side where one time Annan and Stirling winger Nathan Flannigan was impressing. Just before half time they found an equaliser when the broke into the box. Although the Trialist left back did well initially to get back and win the ball cleanly, he was too slow in completing the clearance and then tripped an opponent as he tried to do so. The penalty kick was inevitable and captain Liam Brown sent Botterill the wrong way to level things up.

Queens changed all eleven at half time and sent out a second half team as follows:

1 Murray Johnson, 2 Trialist, 3 Finlay Kennedy, 4 Jack Brydon, 5 Kyle McClelland, 6 Iain Wilson, 7 Craig McGuffie, 8 Josh Todd, 9 Ross Irving, 10 Trialist, 11 Trialist
Subs: Gordon Botterill, Lewis Gibson, Ben Johnstone, Keir Foster and Trialist

There was far less goalmouth action in both penalty areas in the second period and the first incident of note saw Iain Wilson pull up with a painful looking foot injury which saw him carried off after just 10 minutes or so and replaced with Ben Johnstone. Captain Josh Todd didn't last a whole lot longer either, being subbed off as a precaution feeling his knee after 20 minutes. That saw Lewis Gibson come on and Craig McGuffie switch to a central role alongside Ben Johnstone. With two Trialists, a couple of teenagers, one of whom has been ill recently, and a winger playing centrally it's perhaps no great surprise Queens failed to offer a lot of attacking threat in the second period. However, the defence, clearly fairly familiar with one another despite the number of new arrivals having mostly played together with Hibs, coped well with everything East Kilbride had left to offer. To be honest, in the heat I'd imagine both sides were happy enough to hear the final whistle. It looked like we could have played another hour and not seen a further goal anyway.

Still, a useful exercise for the squad and Grant Murray will have plenty to report back to manager Marvin Bartley on. The manager missed the game whilst completing his Pro Licence course in Romania. He'll be back before we face Livingston away next weekend however. Daniel Church, Kyle Doherty, Charlie Cowie and Jay Burns all missed the game with minor injuries. Nice to see many recently former players in the crowd also and in particular to see Rico Quitongo walking well, albeit in a moonboot, after his recent awful injury in his final loan game at Clyde.