Reaction

In the eagerly awaited first derby match of the season against local rivals, Stirling Albion, Alloa Athletic continued their recent run of poor results against “The Albion” with manager Allan Maitland still seeking his first victory over the club’s biggest rivals. This was a game everyone at Recreation Park wanted to win and the side got off to the perfect start with a wonderful goal by ex Stirling Albion player Dougie Wilson who unleashed a 30 yard shot past Myles Hogarth to give “ The Wasps” the all important opening goal, but gradually Stirling Albion were having the lion’s share of possession and Andy Graham choose to have a shot at goal which took a huge deflection off the luckless Iain Campbell to wrong foot Raymond Jellema and give the home side an equaliser. Nine minutes later the Alloa defence stood watching as Stirling Albion passed their way around and into the box, before Ian Harty made it 2-1. Young Liam Corr made in 3-1 before Andy Ferguson give Alloa hope just before half-time making it 3-2 in a pulsating first half. Although Alloa had chances in the second half the fans had to endure another defeat by their local rivals, while Stirling Albion extended their unbeaten run against “The Wasps” to eight league games.

allan maitland on forthbank defeat

It was a very exciting first half I thought, a magnificent start to the game, obviously being a derby game we wanted play the game as a derby, thought we started really well in the game, a great goal by Dougie Wilson which gave us the perfect start, then for some reason, which certainly was not as discussed before the game, I felt we sat back and allowed Stirling Albion more and more of the ball and I thought our defending at all three goals was nothing short of diabolical, that’s the way it has been for us this season, we brought players into the club to make the side defensively better and it’s not happened for us. How many touches of the ball did Stirling Albion have in our box at the second goal, it was incredible. It was pass, pass, pass with three men all over the place, squared to the back post and a free shot at goal. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement, when we go away from home and score two goals I expect us to win the game, I thought offensively at times in the first half we were good, the second half when we were chasing the game we were obviously getting frustrated a lot which was all of our own doing, but when you are chasing the game and not getting advantages when the referee was pulling things back, its all these wee frustrations the same situation with the time wasting, but to be fair to the referee I think he did add on at the end , but we allowed all that to happen because we performed so poorly defensively and its been a major problem for us, I think we have good players on the park, we had everybody available , we should come to Forthbank and win, I cannot even start to express my disappointment that not winning that game today, but well done to Stirling Albion.