Reaction

Huge victory over local rivals Stenhousemuir, four wins in a row and six games without defeat in the league have strengthened “The Wasps” position in second place in the league and reduced deficit to Livingston to seven points with still a game play against the league leaders on 8th April at Tony Macaroni Stadium.

At this stage in the season it is all about results, having gone in front
after 40 minutes through “Man of the Match” Dylan Mackin, Stenhousemuir
never up. The Wasps had changes to increase their lead before substitute

Manager Jim Goodwin didn’t settle for a draw and made a positive
substitution and went all out attack and was rewarded five minutes from the end when Dylan Mackin was fouled in the box by Conner Duthie and Greig Spence stepped forward to score his 21st goal of the season.

jim goodwin post stenhousemuir

Huge win, but we were not at our best, that’s four wins in a row now, the boys have been in great form, really pleased to get the job done, we made hard work of it as the second half wore on but delighted to get the three points, with Livingston losing the gap is now back to seven points. Livingston have set the standard and they have been the team to catch but we have always said in recent weeks we will never throw in the towel and we will keep going right till the end as you say the gap is now back to seven with nine games to play and we still need to play Livingston themselves, we just need to focus and concentrate on our own job and make sure we are picking up points, at 1-1 with fifteen minutes to go we made a change and went all out attack and thankfully it paid off.

I’m very lucky to have the squad of players I have and have good options, Steven Hetherington and Jon Robertson were out today due to suspension, but even then my bench looks pretty strong so to take two big members of the squad out of it completely and still have these attacking options is great. Jamie Longworth has did brilliant coming off the bench and I know he has been frustrated by lack of match time but when he has come on he has always made an impact and has scored some important goals and Stef McCluskey also came on to freshen it up, it was nothing to do with Iain Flannigan or Kevin Cawley performances all I did was to try and freshen things up.

Big Dylan Mackin has been fantastic since he came in he is still only a young boy, a bit raw, he is an old fashioned number nine and that is what we have been lacking since the start of the season, he competes well, he is a nightmare for centre half’s, he holds the ball up well, links the game up well and did fantastic for the opening goal when other people might have lashed at it with their right foot he had the composure to “Cruyff” him turning the ball back onto his left and scored a great goal and then he did well for the penalty as well. Overall the team performance was great but overall we spoke amount just how important the win was regardless of wanting to go out and play great football because we have these types of players but when needs must we need to roll our sleeves up and I thought we did that very well.

For the penalty the centre half clearly kicked my striker and you could hear the sound of the boots being kicked so I thought the referee got it right, I thought Dylan was very honest early on about five minutes before that when he gets kicked again in the box and he tried to stay on his feet when possibly other people might have went down so I did think it was a penalty. I know Stenhousemuir will be disappointed not to have taken something from the game, I thought their performance was very good you can see they are a team fighting for their lives at the bottom of the league and they deserve huge credit for their performance today and made the game as competitive as it was.