Reaction

The Wasps progressed into the draw for the William Hill Scottish Cup 4th Round draw which will take place at 4.45pm Live on Sky News tomorrow, Alloa will be Ball number 3. However it took a second half comeback to progress against local rivals Stenhousemuir at Ochilview on Saturday. The home side took the lead after 27 minutes when Nicki Paterson was on hand to score his first goal for “The Warriors”

The home side had started brighter and deserved their lead, Craig Malcolm did come close minutes later when his header came back off the crossbar but Stenhousemuir were the better side in the first half and came close to adding a second when ex Wasp Jamie Longworth tapped home only to be flagged offside.

Jim Goodwin’s side started the second half more positively and after five minutes were level, Steven Hetherington’s cross found the alert Craig Malcolm who beat the keeper to score the equalising goal 1-1.

This was “The Wasps” best spell in the game and Craig Malcolm doubled his tally in the game, his fourth goal four matches, when again he beat home keeper Chris Smith and fired high into the net to give “The Wasps” the lead.

The last time the teams had met in the Scottish Cup was back in season 2004/05 when goals from Andy Brown & Richard Walker had gave “The Wasps” at 2-1 victory which was again to be the scoreline on this occasion.

Kevin Cawley might have increased the margin of the victory but was denied his 50th goal for the club on this occasion. Stenhousemuir ended the game strongly and made sure “The Wasps” did not enjoy an easy passage into the next round, Brown Ferguson’s team would feel unfortunate they did not get an equalising goal as “The Wasps” progressed to the next round, ties scheduled for 20th & 21st January, 2018.

jim goodwin after cup victory over stenny

We always knew today was going to be a difficult match and that’s exactly how it turned out, we gave Stenhousemuir the respect we felt they deserved, obviously they have been doing very well in their own league you can see they have some very good footballers in their team, but I have to say I was disappointed with the way we started and I thought we just let the first half pass us by, that’s taking nothing away from Stenhousemuir who were the better team in the first half, but I thought in the second half we were the better team, I felt we were the team on the ascendancy although they finished the game strongly, they put bodies up front and created one or two chances. We rode our luck at times today, we definitely did, but it’s a cup tie at the end of the day and all that matters is being in the hat on Monday.

Great for Craig Malcolm to get his two goals today, that’s four goals in last four games for him, it was always going to be difficult for us to replace Greig Spence at the end of last season, we had identified Craig Malcolm long before the end of last season as he had scored a number of goals for Stranraer. Unfortunately for us he picked up an injury in the Betfred Cup Tie against Ross County in the opening game of this season and it took him a wee while to get over that and then when he did come back in takes weeks to get fit again, these things don’t happen overnight but now you are starting to see the Craig Malcolm which attracted us to bring him to the club. He is in the right place more often than not, I thought his first goal in particular he was really brave to put himself in there and get the touch that he did from a great ball from Stevie Hetherington, and the second goal is a fantastic delivery from Iain Flannigan, it was all about the delivery we had great quality coming into the box and again Craig was in the right place.

Stenhousemuir will be disappointed, I thought Brown Ferguson’s team were excellent and the game could have went either way, I’m just grateful it went our way.