Reaction

Alloa Athletic can take great credit for their display against Premier League side St. Mirren in Saturday’s Active Nation Scottish Cup 4th Round tie at Paisley. The Wasps who had not played competitively since the 12th December and had struggled to find anywhere to train showed fantastic chatacter and put up a great fight. If the team had showed more composure in front of goal the result could have been so different, The home side took the lead in 26 minutes, when the impressive Billy Mehmet scored his first goal of what was to be a hat-trick on the day, Alloa battled back and richly deserved their goal, when Mark Brown vollied home Gilhaney’s cross, at this stage Alloa took the game to St. Mirren, never allowing their heads to drop after losing the first goal. Indeed there seemed no danger as we were playing time added on at the end of the first half, until Scot Buist hesitated and Billy Mehmet pounced to give St.Mirren an undeserved lead at half-time. The two defining moments of the game came just either side of half-time, losing the second goal just before half-time and then just into the second half, Andy Scott sent Mark Gilhaney clear, but his shot lacked belief and St.Mirren had survived the best chance of the game. The game still had chances at either end with Andy Scott, now playing further foward himself just failing, with three minutes left and Alloa still pushing for an equaliser, John Grant’s pass across field was intercepted and Billy Mehmet rounded David Crawford for his hat-trick. The Alloa fans stood and applauded their side from the field to cries of “SPL, you’re having a laugh”, St.Mirren go into the next round after taking their chances and hopefully Alloa will learn from this experience, but the fans enjoyed the day, on a negative note however, Mark Gilhaney did limp from the field with fifteen minutes left after injuring his hamstring which is a concern, well done to St.Mirren, who go through to the next round of the competition, but knew they were in a game.

allan maitland after st mirren cup tie

Our objective was to get into the next round of the Scottish Cup and make sure we were in the 5th round, in that point of view we failed today, it was a lesson for us in the sense that if you are going to make mistakes at this level you are going to get punished, Billy Mehmet who was excellent last week against Kilmarnock was their best player on the park and I think he showed that again today, scoring a hat-trick and was unlucky when Davie Crawford made his first real save of the whole game, right at the end to deny him a fourth, when he touched his shot over the bar. Our players equipped themselves really well, we came here and tried to play, our view was to try and frustrate St. Mirren as long as possible, done that then gave away a sloppy goal, got back into the game, quite why Mark Brown was that far up the park I’m not quite sure, but done great with the goal, at that stage I felt if we got to half-time at 1-1 the job would be half done but then a really sloppy unnecessary mistake in time added on gave St. Mirren a second goal. In the second half we started really well and I thought Mark Gilhaney had a wonderful opportunity from a great through ball from Andy Scott, but it was not to be. At half-time we tried to regroup and get Andy Scott further up the park, but Mark really needed to score with that opportunity, if you’re hoping to beat teams at this level you need to take these chances. The two defining moments of the game – Scot Buist not putting the ball in the stand in Row Z in the build up to their second goal and Mark Gilhaney not scoring, but it is a learning curve, I said earlier I hope we will learn from that, I thought the team were well organised, well disciplined and can hold their heads up high, hopefully they can go on and progress in our league and I would wish St. Mirren all the best going forward into the next round of this season’s Active Nation Scottish Cup.