Reaction

Alloa Athletic FC produced one of their best ever results against Rangers in a game that marked the official opening of the Indodrill Stadium. This was the tenth time the clubs had met but this will be looked back on a game in which it was Rangers that snatched a draw. The Alloa players worked hard against their full time rivals and created the best chances in the first half and were rewarded when Jonathan Tiffoney headed home Mark Docherty’s cross on 35 minutes.

The Alloa players were tremendous and had chances to kill the game, Stephen Simmons headed just over the bar and then a Jonathan Tiffoney great through ball gave Greig Spence a great chance to put “The Wasps” two goals ahead, but his shot was saved by Steve Simonsen in the Rangers goal. In the final twenty minutes Rangers managed to push the Alloa defence deeper and their physical presence finally forced an equaliser five minutes from the end, David Templeton knocking home after Lee McCulloch’s shot had been saved.

At the end of the day it was the Rangers players who celebrated snatching a draw and the Alloa Athletic players who were disappointed to lose such a late goal and deny them their first ever competitive victory over the Glasgow side.

barry smith after rangers game

I was delighted with the performance of the boys, we worked ever so hard, we were obviously disappointed at losing a goal so late on and the boys are disappointed in the dressing room, but I have told them they can take a lot of belief and confidence from their performance, especially in the first half where they have created chances and kept the ball for good spells of the game, so it is good for me the boys are disappointed but we have a lot to build on. We always knew this league would be competitive, we think we have a good squad here that will make sure we are competitive. We changed the team slightly from last week and it worked, sometimes you make changes for the benefit of the team – Liam Buchanan who has been terrific this season was left out so we could protect the wider areas a bit, for ourselves a wee bit more because of the players that Rangers have and Jonathan Tiffoney came in and scored our goal. We have been speaking to our wider playing players to make sure they got the ball into the box and that happened today. Greig Spence had a chance to make it 2-0 late in the game, but he has been terrific for us up to this point in the season and he did great playing up front himself today and on another day it might have found the bottom corner of the net, but that is just one of these things and we are not going to criticise him for hitting the target. Most teams will come here and think the surface is horrible but that is because a lot of teams don’t like playing on it but I don’t think that was a factor in the result today, we defended so well and also created chances. We want to make this a difficult place for opposing teams to  come to, for all teams not just against Hearts, Hibs and Rangers.