Reaction

Alloa’s victory over East Fife, extended their lead at the top of the table after Cowdenbeath drew 0-0 with Stenhousemuir and Stirling Albion’s game against Dumbarton was cancelled due to a frozen pitch. This was a hard fought victory over an East Fife team who “The Wasps” had not defeated in a league match at Recreation Park since 2nd December, 2003, Tom Hendrie’s first game back in 2nd spell as manager at the club, when they won 2-0 with goals from Iain Nicolson and Ross Hamilton. This was a solid performance from Allan Maitland’s team in which Stuart Noble was excellent, with great work rate and two goals. East Fife had good spells in the game but failed in front of goal, where David Crawford recorded his 15th shut-out of the season. The team have started the year in such a positive mood and are currently on a great run of form and are enjoying their football. Next Saturday they face Cowdenbeath at Central Park and Danny Lennon’s side will be looking for revenge for recent 2-1 victory for Alloa at Recreation Park.

allan maitland after defeating east fife

I think it is a magnificent result for us today, again it shows how difficult it is to play a game of high intensity on Tuesday and then have another game again today against a team who are really fresh and East Fife were excellent, from the first minute I thought they played really well, controlled long spells of the game and our front two had to work hard just to try and shut them down as opposed to normally we would be looking for them to make good runs to get into good areas for us but they had to work hard today to close them down – the midfield four couldn’t get far enough up the park to help them but one thing this team has got is a fantastic attitude – they are so determined not to loose goals which obviously helps and with Bryan Prunty, Stuart Noble, David Gormley and Andy Scott I feel we have got goals in our team, today it was Stuart Noble, another day it’s Bryan Prunty it’s a magnificent result for us on a day when I don’t believe we played well, I’m not even sure we completely deserved to win the game although we did get stronger as the second half went on – in the first half I thought we were poor and I felt in the second half we had a lot of good balls going in the box and you hope that you are going to get that second goal which means you can rest easy but the most important thing for us today was that we defended really well and our goal keeper when he was needed had one magnificent save. Paul McManus was a threat throughout the whole game as was Stevie Crawford – you have to remember this East Fife team played at Stirling and drew 3 – 3 and were excellent, they played against Cowdenbeath drew 2 – 2 – they are a good side, who passed the ball really well – we had to work ever so hard just to stay in the game, so to win it 2-0 on a day when Cowdenbeath drew and dropped points and with Stirling Albion not playing it give us a chance to open that gap. We will rest this week as we have a really difficult game next Saturday, against Cowdenbeath at Central Park and what we need to do is focus and get ourselves rested this week and make sure we are ready for next Saturday. We are on a great run of results at the moment and we said last week , that we had 3 games in 8 days and we would like to get a minimum of 5 points but if we could get 7 that would be great and having drawn the first game I think the players have done magnificently well to do that and I could not be more pleased with them, I have given them Tuesday night off and we will rest for Thursday, work on Thursday and hopefully get it right for Saturday. When we are playing well we are scoring goals but we are also scoring goals when we are not playing well and I think that’s a big thing. Stuart Noble has scored three games in a row and looks as though he is on fire again. David Gormley I thought really helped us when he came on, he gave us a lot of energy and suddenly we started playing the game at their end of the park again, before we were that we were just sitting in too deep I felt, but again pleased with another three points and looking forward to our next game.