Dundee Utd 5
Partick Th 1
League (Premier Division)

Match Report

Eamonn Bannon dropped out of the eleven that started against Dundee in midweek, with Ian Gibson coming in to face his former club and his first start of the season. Billy Kirkwood recovered from flu to come back into the side, with Iain Phillip joining Bannon on the bench.

As early as the second minute, a superb Paul Sturrock through ball let Ralph Milne in but Alan Rough was smartly off his line to save. A minute later Sturrock flicked on a Richard Gough throw into Kirkwood but his angled drive found Rough excellently positioned to save. United made the breakthrough in the ninth minute, when a Kirkwood cross from the left was played into the path of Davie Dodds by Paul Sturrock, and the striker's close-in shot was aided into the net via a deflection. United edged further ahead in the 20th minute when a John Holt cross from the right found Davie Dodds, who out-jumped the Partick defence to head past Rough from six yards. In the 22nd minute Gibson fired home from 16 yards and the referee originally gave the goal, before a consultation with his stand-side linesman saw an offside decision given instead. However, United's third was only delayed a few more minutes, when Richard Gough headed a perfectly floated Milne free-kick in at the far post. The Scotland keeper managed to keep the score down before half-time arrived, brilliantly saving a Derek Stark drive from 10 yards, and Dodds could have claimed his hat-trick but scooped the ball over.

Six minutes into the second half Partick defender Dave McKinnon managed to chip over his own keeper to put United four ahead. Alex O'Hara pulled one back for Thistle just after the hour mark with a header, but Davie Dodds completed his hat-trick from a Ralph Milne cross with quarter of an hour left to complete what, without Alan Rough, would have been a total rout. After a bit of a goal drought recently, this was a morale-boosting outing ahead of the trip to Serbia for the second leg of the UEFA Cup quarter final tie with Radnicki Nis. United still sat 6th in the table after this victory, but were now just 2 points from 4th place, with a game in hand over St Mirren. Partick replaced Dundee at the foot of the table.