Bo'ness United: Boss Stuart Hunter blasts 'unforgiveable' defending in shock 4-2 cup loss to minnows Cumbernauld United
After taking a 19th-minute lead through Ryan Stevenson against their West of Scotland League second division opponents, Lowland League United then proceeded to concede four goals to John Cunningham (2), Warin Omar and Lee Whitmore before netting on 85 minutes through Michael Gemmell.
“It’s definitely a cup shock,” BU boss Hunter told club media post match. “I think it’s really disappointing. It was a disappointing performance from us. In the first half we had a lot of the ball and Cumbernauld were kind of camped in.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad"But with all the possession that we had I didn’t think we were picking the right pass. We were playing a lot of centralised football where it was very, very crowded whereas I think we would have got a lot more joy if we’d tried to break their line, put balls over the top of them etcetera.
"I thought Cumbernauld wanted it more than us. I felt there was no spark at all from our team until we went 4-1 down.
"It’s easy to try and get motivation when the game’s almost gone, in fact at 4-1 it is gone. It could have then been 5-1 to be honest.
"We needed to be doing that when we were winning 1-0, when we had the ascendancy in the game. We needed to then go forward and out the game away but we never did that.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad"All over the park I just thought we were lacking quality. I thought defensively today we were a mile away. Some of our defensive mistakes were unforgiveable.
"It’s not just the back four, it's all across the park.
"It was just a really, really bad day at the office. We’re going to have to get the boys in next week, we’re going to have to recover, we’re going to have to get that out the system because we’ve got another masive test coming next week.”
Hunter was referring to the BUs’ home Scottish Cup first round match against Darvel this Saturday.
He added: “We will have to play an awful lot better than we played today. But I’m optimistic that when the so called bigger games come around, our team rises to those occasions.”
Comment Guidelines
National World encourages reader discussion on our stories. User feedback, insights and back-and-forth exchanges add a rich layer of context to reporting. Please review our Community Guidelines before commenting.