Reaction

The Wasps today suffered their first back to back defeat at Recreation Park this season, when they lost 2-1 to Dumbarton, who themselves still had an outside chance of sneaking into the end of season play-off’s. In fairness Dumbarton started the best and had the Alloa defence under early pressure, an early booking after only 15 minutes was too prove costly for David McClune, Dumbarton opened the scoring after 31 minutes through David Winters and six minutes later McClune was issued with his second yellow of the day and Alloa were reduced to ten men, however in the second period Alloa did equalise after a good run into the box by young Declan McAvoy but he was impeded by Chris Smith, Andy Scott made no mistake from the spot, game on. At this stage Alloa had gained the upper hand and had chances to go ahead but ex Alloa keeper Michael White pulled off some outstanding saves to deny the Alloa attack. On 64 minutes ex Inverness CT striker Dennis Wyness scored after hesitancey in the Alloa defence. In the end the team showed great spirit but fell short in such an important game. We now have two games left, next Saturday away to Perhead and a final day home fixture against Cowdenbeath, games the team will surely need to win to give themselves a chance of winning the title. However with Stirling Albion winning 3-1 at Ochilview today our local rivals know they could win the title if they remain unbeaten in their final four matches. It has been a great season for “The Wasps” but we now need one final push if we are to win the title.

allan maitland after dumbarton game

It’s a strange time to start losing home games, but that comes with anxiety of being at the top of the league, today we came against a Dumbarton side that I thought played really well, particularly in the first half and deservedly went ahead, but I am expecting my experienced players to get us through these days and what I don’t expect is my experienced players to get themselves sent off so quickly after having been booked and I think that absolutely killed us. In the second half we showed great spirit and got ourselves back into the game with a penalty kick which looked a soft one – I thought we had two better claims after that to be fair, I thought Stuart Noble had a great chance but Michael White made a great save on the line and at that time we had the momentum of the game – we then lost a really strange and soft goal when we should have cleared it –however, it needed a good shout and someone to take charge, but we didn’t clear it properly and they scored and as people say goals change games and that’s exactly what happened. Dumbarton then looked as though they could have scored a third goal and it became more difficult for us but we still have spirit and as long as we still have spirit we still have a chance. We now have a situation where we know we need to go to Peterhead and win, then we have got to try and beat Cowdenbeath and obviously hope that Stirling Albion slip up in the meantime. It was always going to be a difficult game today as it has been against Dumbarton all season, if we don’t win the league it won’t be because we can’t beat Dumbarton, it will be because we have not done enough ourselves. We had got ourselves into a great position and in the last two weeks for whatever reason we have not started the games until we went behind and I think that is exactly what happened today, but we have got spirit and still believe and I have told the guys to go out tonight and have a blow out and get it out of their system and we will come back and train on Tuesday and Thursday and will hopefully go to Peterhead and do better. It’s fair to say today was disappointing and I don’t think we have got anybody to blame but ourselves.