Reaction

Alloa Athletic lost to a last minute contoversial penalty kick, when referee Frank McDermott decided Alloa goalkeeper David Crawford had fouled Brechin City striker Rory McAllister, after a mistake by Chris Townsley had allowed the Brechin City player the chance, however after looking to initally control the ball with his arms McAllister was allowed to carry on into the box, but his touch pushed the ball wide of the goal before Rory collided with the keeper and went down, the referee then awarded the controversial kick, which allowed Brechin City to collect all three points. “The Wasps” had fought back from being two goals behind and looked like collecting a point in a hard fought 2-2 draw until the last minute drama. Alloa now have three league games left – Dumbarton (H), Peterhead (A) and Cowdenbeath (H).

allan maitland after brechin defeat

We are obviously disappointed to loose, in strange circumstances, I thought in the first half of the game we didn’t show enough urgency and even though we had lots of the ball and Craig Nelson had a couple of good saves I thought the pace of the game was too slow and in Brechin’s only chance they created in the first half they scored from it and that put us on the backfoot. In the second half we were to open and that was due to the fact we were then chasing the game and they could have picked us off, they hit the post and David Crawford had a great one on one save but having made the save he could half expect his defence to clear but we didn’t do that and Brechin got a second goal, we then suddenly came alive again in the last twenty minutes, we scored from a corner kick, we hit the post, we scored a second goal, we were the team on the ascendancy and then out of the blue Chris Townsley made a mistake, which is very rare for him and from the mistake – how the referee decides that was a penalty I’ll never know? He said he felt David Crawford had a hold of McAllister’s jersey but I’m sorry for me McAllister got to close to Crawford, pushed the ball past him, got between him and the ball and Rory went down, probably through tiredness more than anything else and how the referee saw that as a penalty at that stage of the game is unbelievable. However we have had decisions go our way and sometimes they go against you but I’m not happy about it but if the referee sees it as being a penalty he has to give it and that’s absolutely fine. From our point of view the last twenty minutes was miles better than the first seventy but we need to do that more often if we are to going to try and win the league. Brechin are a good side, they needed to win this game just as badly as we did and I thought it was a very good game of football, unfortunately for Alloa Athletic, not the result we would have looked for but it was a good game. We need to move on, I said before the game I thought we needed anther seven points, win two and draw one, we now have three games left and still need more points just today’s defeat has come earlier than I would have liked, we have big games ahead of us and with Stirling Albion also winning it tightens the pack, but it is still all to play for, no one will gave anything at this stage of the season, we will have to win it on our on merit and today twenty minutes isn’t enough to beat a good Brechin side.