Dundee United 3-0 Ross County

Posted Sunday, May 16, 2010 by theguardian.com

Craig Conway's double shatters Ross County's dreams

Dundee United 3-0 Ross County
David Goodwillie celebrates scoring Dundee United's first goal.

Like most fairytales, the one in which Ross County were the main players was touched by dark moments. Indeed, their experience of the Scottish Cup final for the first time in their history would be scary enough to keep the kids off their sleep for a week.

By the time it was over, Dundee United had won the oldest trophy of all by the kind of margin that betrayed the gap in status between these rivals, the SPL side proving much too strong for their opponents from the First Division.

County were never able to summon the fluency, the spirit or the menace that had taken care of Hibs and Celtic during a run to the climactic match of the entire season that had made them the first team from the Highlands to achieve the distinction.

United, whose victory would be completed by the opener from David Goodwillie and a double from Craig Conway, were hardly brilliant but they were the sounder team throughout, their goal never threatened, while causing – especially in the second half – some alarms in the County defence.

Sod's Law would decree that until Goodwillie's second-half tie-breaker, two teams who had delivered 32 goals on their way – 75 percent of them by the relentlessly prolific Dingwall side – would here find them about as plentiful as streets paved with gold.

Neither could blame unfamiliarity with the environment, since Ross County had beaten Celtic 2-0 in the semi-final and United had disposed of Raith Rovers by the same score at the same venue 24 hours later.

Doubtless, the shortage of attention-grabbing incidents around either goal could be ascribed to a certain tension among players for whom the occasion was, by and large, a rare experience.

United, who had been unlucky to lose the League Cup final to Rangers last season, were predictably able to settle more quickly than their opponents, and enjoyed the bulk of possession and covered most of the territory during a first half in which they were unable to trouble Michael McGovern in the County goal.

Even on the two occasions before half-time when they carried a threat, they were neutralised by some smart defending from Alex Keddie. It was the light-footed Danny Swanson who was first to provide a scare, when he suddenly bolted past the defensive line.

He had to run 50 yards before seeing the whites of McGovern's eyes and, by the time he brought the ball under control and hit his shot, Keddie had scampered back to deflect the ball wide. Goodwillie pushed into a similar position on a long ball out of defence, using his pace to get behind his markers and head towards McGovern. On this occasion, however, the United player was dilatory in executing the scoring attempt and Keddie was able to take the ball off his toe with an outstretched left foot.

Before that, Keddie had also been involved in the only other moment of intrigue before half-time, when he was the subject of a rather frivolous penalty claim by United when he was alleged to have blocked the turning Swanson inside the area on the left, but the latter had clearly run into the defender.

By the time Goodwillie gave United the lead, it had become certain that the deadlock would be ended by either an aberration or a piece of inspired invention. In the event, both were at work. The sequence began with a long speculative ball from Morgaro Gomis and chased by County's central defenders and Swanson.

Coming the other way was McGovern, and it seemed likely that, if the goalkeeper had stood his ground just inside the box, he would have gathered the ball into his arms. Instead, he chose to step outside and try to head clear. He sent the ball straight to Goodwillie, whose 30-yard lob was beautifully controlled, passing over the defenders and dropping into its target like a perfectly judged chip.

Even the most loyal of County fans could not have argued with the deservedness of United's lead, and the Conway double would confirm the overall superiority.

The first of the Conway goals arrived when he broke free through the inside-left channel and finished calmly, left-footing the ball low past McGovern from 12 yards. He completed the business when Gomis whipped the cross in, and Conway, in turn, hit the ball right-footed on the turn past McGovern from near the penalty spot.