Reaction

Alloa Athletic opened their league season at Dumbarton and won 3-1 in a game full of emotion, this was always going to be a tough fixture after the death of the Dumbarton captain Gordon Lennon in the close season, however not playing at their best, Alloa’s performance in the second half merited their 3-1 victory although in the first hour the team toiled and needed a Dumbarton equaliser to bring them to life. Allan Maitland choose to leave Greig Spence on the bench in the midst of all the transfer speculation and allowed him only the last couple of minutes and a final cheer from the Alloa fans.

Alloa Athletic                                   Dumbarton
1 David Crawford                             1 David McEwan
2 David McClune Bkd 28m              2 Andy Geggan
3 Marc McCafferty                          3 Chris Smith
4 Scot Buist                                     4 Ben Gordon
5 Chris Townsley                             5 Michael Dunlop
6 John Grant Bkd 83m                     6 Ross Clark
7 Andy Scott                                    7 Chris Craig
8 Mark Brown                                 8 Scott Chaplain
9 Brian Carrigan                              9 Dennis McLaughlin  Sent Off 84 m
10 Scott Agnew                             10 Derek Carcary
11 Stuart Noble                              11 Stevie Murray

12 Gary Carroll (7) 61m  Bkd 62m   12 Iain Chishol (7) 80m
14 Hugh Kerr (11) 83m                    14 Roddy Hunter (11) 74m
15 Ross Philp                                    15 Martin McNiff
16 Greig Spence (9) 89m                  16 Ryan McStay

GK Stephen Hall                               GK Michael White (1) 46m
Referee : Anthony Law                Asst: Martin Cryans & Alan Newlands
CROWD – 864

1 – 0 John Grant (44 mins)
1 – 1 John Grant OG (54 mins)
2 – 1 Brian Carrigan (60 mins)
3 – 1 Stuart Noble (62 mins)

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allan maitland after dumbarton victory

I know today was a big day for Dumbarton and I thought for 60 minutes we tried to help them as much as we could, I didn’t think we started the game well, I thought Dumbarton were excellent and during that spell our goalkeeper was magnificent, having three or four super saves. We did have a couple of problems prior to kick-off with Scot Buist and Andy Scott both being sick in the dressing room prior to the match which obviously didn’t help us, they struggled with that throughout the game. The big thing that changed the game was Brian Carrigan’s goal, when he scored the second goal the whole game opened up for us, Stuart Noble scored a great third goal and after that we started playing. It has been a hard day for Dumbarton, obviously a very emotional day, they have played ever so well and ended the game with nothing and had a man sent-off. I think the rules of the game now, if you are going to tackle from behind you are going to go off, whether it’s a nothing tackle or not by the looks of things, I feel for them, but I said before the game, we need to focus on ourselves and get off to a far better start than we have in recent seasons. I was delighted to see my strikers scoring goals, it was a great result for us but not a fantastic performance.