Reaction

Alloa Athletic defeated Stirling Albion at Forthbank Stadium, their first victory at Forthbank since Allan Maitland took over as team manager in January, 2006, the last time an Alloa Athletic side had won at Forthbank Stadium was back on 27th August, 2005 when “The Wasps” won 2-1 with goals from Robert Sloan & David Greenhill. This was a game Alloa needed to win, knowing defeat would put the team nine points behind Stirling Albion and the players certainly gave their all. The only goal of the game came after 22 minutes when Stuart Noble was fouled in the box and Andy Scott scored his 2nd winning goal of the season against Stirling Albion and their manager Allan Moore who had decided not to sign Andy after trial matches with Stirling Albion after being released by Motherwell. Alloa had other opportunities to score through John Grant and Stuart Noble, but with only two left Mark Brown missed the best chance of the match after being put through by Brian Carrigan, but the advancing Scott Christie saved and the Alloa fans had to wait till the referee played five minutes extra time before exebrating such an important win for the side.

allan maitland at forthbank

Obviously it was a magnificent game for us to win, the win meant everything to us today, I know Stirling Albion had a lot of pressure in the second half but throughout the game I thought we had the best chances in the game, in the first half I thought we were worth our 1-0 lead, it was a stonewall penalty, which was also our first of the season incidentally, a magnificent finish from Andy Scott with Stuart Noble and Brian Carrigan always a threat to the Albion defence. In the second half as Stirling poured bodies forward, not unlike the game earlier in the season at the Recs, we went to five in the middle of the park and we didn’t hold on to the ball the same and it kept on coming back, however whenever the ball went into the box there always seemed to be an Alloa player there, we threw our bodies at it, blocked things, they did have two good chances at the back post when their two players got in each others way and should have scored but equally Mark Brown had the best chance of the second half and I always felt there was a second goal for us if we had a wee bit more composure. Having gone on a run of six games without a victory we have now managed to turn that around, shut outs help, winning against Clyde gave us a bit more confidence and today’s victory now leaves us only three points of the top of the league, so we are in good shape a lot better shape than we were three or four weeks ago, Brown Ferguson got injured today but generally the injury situation is improving and that is a factor in why we are again doing better, a great result for us today, delighted for all the Alloa Athletic fans, my first victory against Stirling Albion at Forthbank since I became the manager of Alloa Athletic, but our recent record over Stirling Albion hasn’t been all that bad, so it has been a big day for us and if we can keep winning these derby matches we shouldn’t be too far away.
Mark Brown has had an excellent game today, but when Brian Carrigan put him through on goal with just the keeper to beat, it’s not a position where you would normally find Mark Brown, last week against Clyde, it was Mark who set up Brian Carrigan for our opening goal, today he had that opportunity, the big change today was at the beginning of the second half when Liam Corr came on and played just behind the front two and that was causing us huge problems until I changed our shape and moved Mark into that area and he did that really well, he was excellent for us and that made their chances all the more difficult to come by, they then started punting balls into our box which with Scott Walker and Scot Buist at the heart of the defence we dealt with that. Today I felt our team looked like they wanted to win from the off, and usually the team that needs it most wins, maybe that’s what happened today. We certainly needed the victory far more than Stirling Albion did and were rewarded for our efforts.