Reaction

Alloa lost their unbeaten league record tonight against Dumbarton having gone 12 games unbeaten back to 14th November, 2009. Manager Allan Maitland made changes to the side from Saturday, Mark McCafferty replaced Kevin Welsh at left back, david gormley was given his first start and Mark Gilhaney was back in the starting eleven – leaving SPL Phenominal Player of the Month Stuart Noble on the bench, along with Andy Scott and John Grant. Dumbarton started the games brightest and Ben Gordon headed them into the lead aftet only 17 minutes. jan Vojacek made a great stop from a Brown Ferguson shot but Alloa were happy to go in at half-time at one down. Two minutes into the second half Dumbarton were awarded a free kick just outside the box and Alan Cook thundered home the increase the home sides lead, then nine minutes later Scott walker was deemed to have given away a penalty just inside the box and worse was to follow when referee Colin Brown gave him a second yellow card on the evening and sent him off, ex Wasp Ross Clark made no mistake from the spot. Allan Maitland then introduced Stuart Noble, John Grant and Andy Scott and soon Alloa began to play more like league leaders. Stuart Noble snatched a goal back only 5 minutes after coming on but “The Wasps” could not get a second goal while they were on top to put pressure on the home side who were looking to play out time.

allan maitland after dumbarton defeat

Dumbarton were better than us for the majority of the game, certainly the first half they came out and started much brighter than us, we obviously had changes to our team, we had players delayed in traffic on the M8 so we had to make changes to the team and maybe that didn’t help us, we were certainly slower than them out of the blocks. Dumbarton deserved to be ahead at half-time and we were possibly fortunate it was only 1-0 at that stage, at half-time we tried to reorganise and sort things out. I thought the free kick for the second goal looks harsh, giving a handball when the player was standing only a yard away from the kicker, we didn’t get a penalty kick – a simple situation with handball in their box , but these things happen and then of course we lose a penalty kick and a sending off, which didn’t help us. The players which ended up on the park showed great effort, great commitment but if you only start playing after an hour, you will find yourself beaten and that is exactly what happened, we were second best and now we have a really difficult game at Stirling on Saturday, for our point of view we need to pick ourselves up, we also managed to have Scott Walker injured and suspended after his red card, Chris Townsley injured, Andy Scott injured and a general feeling on the night of a grievance we never got things our way, I don’t mean I think we deserved to get things our way but most 50/50’s didn’t go our way, however the referee didn’t lose us the game we lost it ourselves, you have to give credit to the opposition, at home Dumbarton have been excellent they were good the first game of the season and they were good tonight and deserved to beat us. Scott Walker is an honest lad and he said at the penalty “I played the ball at the same time as their boy played it and the referee didn’t just give the penalty but chose to send me off?” Even if he had caught the boy I didn’t see the incident as a sending off, it was not a last man situation, the player wasn’t going to run through and score the ball was going away from the two players so I didn’t see that and the referee deemed that it was a sending off along with a penalty. The better team won on the night and we can only blame ourselves for that, we were second to every ball. The three subs livened the game up when they came on and although Stuart Noble pulled a goal back for us we couldn’t get that second goal in the spell when even down to ten players we were on top and causing their defence to panic.