Reaction

Alloa Athletic moved to the top of the SFL Irn Bru Division Two after a 2-1 home victory over Cowdenbeath, at times Alloa played some excellent football and goals from Bryan Prunty and Stuart Noble put them 2-0 ahead before the visitors battled back in the second half and Paul McQuade pulled a goal back twenty minutes from time. This ensured a nail biting end to the game which could so easily been out of sight, with Bryan Prunty and Brown Ferguson both on two occasions failing to extend Alloa’s lead when given clear opportunities. The players and management have worked hard to move back to the top of the league and will look to build on this result against East Fife at Recreation Park on Saturday.

allan maitland reflects on going top

It is nice to be sitting top of the league, but more important for us tonight when it comes to a big game it is good to play well in one and I thought at times in this game our football was excellent, when Cowdenbeath scored there was then a bit of a siege as they started to throw bodies forward, Cowdenbeath played really well tonight, the second half particularly, but we had the best chances in the game, Bryan Prunty twice through on goal, Brown Ferguson twice through on goal and we missed the ones they should have scored but Bryan Prunty who has been brought to this club to score goals, scored a goal out of nothing, and that makes the difference in the game, it gave us something to hold on to, I thought the second goal was poorly defended from their point of view but Stuart Noble deserved his goal, he was absolutely superb tonight, it was just a great team performance. Gary Carroll has come in and played really well, Mark Brown had to play deeper in centre back and I thought he did well and handled Gareth Wardlaw really well. Some people think Cowdenbeath will fall away but I don’t see any of that, they have got good players in their side, they play really well, they have got a good manager and they will be there at the end, I’m sure they will. For us it was important for us to try and win and put a bit of pressure on Stirling Albion to force them to win their games in hand if they want to go top of this league. Tonight we will enjoy and see if we can build on this result again on Saturday.

As we look forward to Saturday we will have to assess the injury situation with a number of players, Andy Scott came off with a bit of cramp tonight, so he will be ok I’m sure, Scot Buist and Chris Townsley will both be out again on Saturday, Mark Gilhaney could have made the bench tonight but will be included on Saturday, Kevin Welsh is probably a couple of weeks away but we are getting there bit by bit, we have good players at this club and they want to win and work for each other and that’s why we are where we are in this league and they deserve great credit.
We lost Greig Spence at the beginning of the season, he was our poacher, Iain Russell came to the club to be the poacher and score the goals and when he left we brought in Bryan Prunty and that is his role now, he is the bit that makes the rest of the team work, and what he has done is he has given everybody at the club a huge lift, because they know if they get the ball in the box, Bryan Prunty is capable of scoring goals and he has already proven that and it has rubbed off on Stuart Noble who has also started to hit form, the two of them have linked up well together. However over the piece tonight I don’t think anybody could argue we didn’t deserve our victory, however we could have done without giving Cowdenbeath hope in the last twenty minutes, which seemed long!