Sentence:  Flair and invention were very much at a premium, suffocated by the relentless pace and often <WSD>fractious</WSD> nature of proceedings. The absence of James Morrison from the centre of Scotland's midfield, the West Brom man ruled out on the morning of the game by illness, had already diminished the creative capacity of the home side in that department. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  irritable; argumentative; quarrelsome