Reaction

No one could have wrote the script for this match against Stirling Albion, “The Wasps” winning against all the odds against their local rivals in a match where they had to draft in a “trialist” centre back such was the limit to the players before the game and then to lose another three players during the first half – this was a massive result for the club and showed the spirit and will to win in the Alloa squad. Manager Allan Maitland was looking for a positive result after the disappointment of Tuesday night’s result against Dumbarton but was aware better than anybody, just who was available. Danny Main played in the centre of the defence as a trialist from Bo’ness United and was imense, as was every player who wore an Alloa Athletic shirt at Forthbank Stadium. Mark Gilhaney had to be replaced after only 16 minutes by Jamie Hay, then top scorer Stuart Noble had to go off after 25 minutes with David Gormley taking his place, four minutes later David Gormley scored a wonderful goal to put Alloa ahead. At half-time David McClune couldn’t play on and Ross Philp replaced McClune. Stirling Albion at this stage knew Alloa had a weakened side and pushed hard for the equaliser but twenty mintes from time Jamie Hay sent over an inch perfect pass and Bryan Prunty nipped in to make it 2-0, with Stirling then pushing more forward Prunty again caught out the home defence to double his tally and make it 3-0, there was no way back and Alloa won for the second time at Forthbank this season.

allan maitland after stirling albion

Today we had no Scott Walker, Chris Townsley or Scot Buist, Andy Scott then failed a late fitness test, no Kevin Welsh, then when we played the first half we lost David McClune, Stuart Noble, Mark Gilhaney, we are eight players down and 1-0 up, you think you are going to have to dig in and hang on to the game, however the back four and John Grant in the middle of the park did magnificently well at that bit, and then to score another two goals and win the game 3-0 speaks volumes for where we are in terms of team spirit and obviously recovering from Tuesday night was so important but it is difficult for Stirling Albion they are in a situation themselves where they have not been winning and are desperate to win and they are 1-0 down and they can see we have got a weakened team on the park and they are throwing bodies forward so there is always a chance they might get caught on the break. The first goal is obviously important for us David Gormley who had a really difficult night on Tuesday night at Dumbarton where nothing went right for him comes on the park and within 5 minutes scores a magnificent goal for us and that is really the thing that helped us enormously, even though you have all these other set backs it give you something to hang on to and one thing our team can do this season is hang on and dig in and they know they have a great goal keeper behind them who had a great save I think at 1-0. There was two good penalty claims in there which one of them might have been a penalty, I’m not quite sure I thought the second one it looked as though Tiff maybe knocked the ball out of the park but the first one looked like a penalty, equally on Tuesday night there was a penalty given against us that was never a penalty so I dare say these things balance themselves out. Mark Brown , was magnificent as I said already and we just had a day when we probably looked like the team that wanted it more than they did and that’s my opinion. With Bryan Prunty on the park you always have a chance because he will score us goals, his goals have been invaluable already but him and David Gormley were both at Ayr United and we signed the two of them hoping they would be able to link up but they’ve not managed that at all so far but today for the first time that happened the two of them have scored goals and it’s a wonderful result for us – I mean a wonderful result – one at half time that I’m sure nobody here could have seen coming, but as I said the spirit in the camp is magnificent, we will need to count the bodies for Tuesday nights game at Cowdenbeath but at the moment we will enjoy this one and I’m sure the game a week on Tuesday against Stirling will be an eventful one, hopefully with the same result. I feel for Stirling Albion because they played well during the game but we caught them in the counter attack and that has happened to them a lot this year, not scoring goals and losing Martin Grehan and Bryan Prunty has been a big blow to them but its came at our benefit.