Reaction

A late penalty strike by substitute Andy Scott gave “The Wasps” a share of the points in a game at half-time looked unlikely that the team might gain anything from. Livingston who unfurled the Third Division League flag at the start of the game scored inside two minutes, when Kyle Jacobs, one of the three triplets at the club, headed home unchallenged. Worse was to follow on 21 minutes, when ex Wasp, Iain Russell caught Stephen Robertson off his line and scored with a well placed shot. At this stage Livi were rampant and it wasn’t until after 30 minutes that Prunty managed a shot on goal. Alloa made two changes at half-time, Andy Scott & Jim Lister being introduced and this changed the game. Darren Smith scored his first goal for “The Wasps” after 54 minutes with a shot from outside the boc and four minutes later Alloa were level. Bryan Prunty pouncing on a defensive error by MacDonald. This was Alloa’s best spell in the match and Livingston were then gifted another goal, Declan McAvoy heading past Robertson under pressure from Iain Russell. To Alloa’s credit they never gave up, Jim Lister was causing the Livi defence all sorts of bother, five minutes from the end of the game David Gormley stole past the keeper and defence and was pulled down for a penalty which Andy Scott coolly despatched for a hard earned point. The Wasps conceeded poor goals today but their fighting spirit could not be questioned.

allan maitland after livingston defeat

I want to start by saying how disappointed I am in how we played and give credit to Livingston I thought they were excellent from the start, obviously for us we felt the first 20 minutes would have been really important in the game and in a minute and a half we were a goal down and in, twenty minutes 2-0 down and in all fairness at half time it could have been any score.  I thought Livingston played really well, the front two plus Bobby Barr really caused us real problems – I had a few choice words at half time obviously, but I felt that we contributed to our own downfall with the defending  – first goal awful, second goal dreadful, third goal we didn’t get any better I have to say – at least in the second half when Jim Lister came on his presence up the park, and the ball started sticking up the park we had good support coming from the middle of the park Darren Smith scored a fantastic goal which  gives us a lift and then when Bryan Prunty scored a goal when Cameron MacDonald made a defensive error and Prunty pounced.  We got ourselves back into the game – not by playing well but by sheer persistence.  We then managed to give away a third goal and could have lost another  – I was very pleased to get ourselves back into the game with a penalty kick which shows a bit of spirit I have to say – you know for all I am critiscing the way we played at least the team showed a bit of spirit to get themselves back into the game but they didn’t deserve a point today, on the day Livingston were better than us  so we are thankful for the point.  I think the game was typified with two things one is we lose a goal in the first couple of minutes  when we wanted to try and make life difficult for them and by the end of the game we get a corner kick when it is 3 each and we charge up the park trying to score a winner in a day when quite frankly we were awful we should have accepted that, taken a short corner and tried to play out time instead of that Livingston got a great break and could have scored a 4^th goal which was only prevented with Declan McAvoy redeeming himself by clearing off the line.  It’s a great point but not a great day for us so we need to improve dramatically if we are going to do anything this year.