Reaction

Jim Goodwin was glad to see “The Wasps” return to winning ways on Saturday in the league derby with Stenhousemuir. This was Jim Goodwin’s first home victory since taking over the player / manager role at the club. “The Warriors” came to the Indodrill Stadium in good form, having defeated Queen’s Park at Hampden Park the previous week 3-0 and showed great fighting spirit on the last occasion the sides met on 17th September when the battled back to an unlikely 2-2 with a last minute goal to snatch a point a Ochilview.

Alloa top goalscorer Greig Spence struck the opening goal after only 8 minutes after a poor clearance from ex Alloa keeper David Crawford. The visitors tried to get into the game but were unfortunate when Alan Cook clashed with keeper Neil Parry and he had to leave the field of play after only 21 minutes. Alloa made it 2-0 seven minutes later when Andy Graham headed home his second goal for the club.

Greig Spence was then unfortunate to see his shot strike the crossbar, but the alert Jamie Longworth dived forward to head into the net for a long awaited goal for the talisman. Three nil, but as happens often when teams score they put down their guard and a minute later Alistair Roy struck a goal out of the blue.
Alloa pushed for more goals in the second half, shouted unaccustomedly towards the railway end in the second period. Alloa’s fourth goal arrived from Kevin Cawley who was having a “Man of the match” display and deservedly got on the scoreline.

Although Alloa never increased the scoreline, it could have been more, but more important job done and another vital three league points gathered.

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jim goodwin after victory over stenhousemuir

I thought we started the game really poorly but still managed to be 3-1 up at half-time , I had a bit of a go at the boys at half-time, I felt we had not reached the levels we are capable of, but it was a great sign to be sitting there winning at half-time and the players were having a go at each other as well, that is the great thing of having  such a good squad they know the standards they are capable of and they know what we expect, and they expect the same of each other. The second half performance was really pleasing; I thought we could have had another couple of goals as well, in saying that big Neil Parry has had to make some vital saves at key moments in the game as well. A great all round team performance and delighted with the result, I will now go and enjoy the weekend.

Jamie Longworth did really well in his first full league game for the club, in fairness to him he has been training really well over the last couple of weeks and “Flanny” again had a slight back problem prior to the game, so it looks like he might be out for another couple of weeks, so Jamie came in and was different class, he actually gave us a bit more aerial threat as well, he can win flick on s and he got his goal as well.

My message to the boys today was play just as well as we train, I wish you could all see the intensity the players train on a Tuesday & Thursday evening, it is a pleasure to watch, today there were moments when you could see the quick one twos, round the corner and one touch football and that’s how we train and there is no point in us training like that during the week and not playing the same way on a Saturday and that’s my message to the boys each week – just play the way we train. They are a credit to themselves, they are at peak fitness levels and even with five minutes to go they are still pressing high up the pitch, they don’t give the opposition players a second on the ball.

We will not get carried away with today’s result but it was great to get back to winning ways and with four different goal scorers. It was a point I made earlier in the week to the players that we cannot rely solely on Greig Spence, we need more goals from all over the park and I made that point before today’s game, it was great that Big Andy scores  from a corner, and Jamie Longworth and Kevin Cawley both with fantastic finishes. If we are going to make a serious title push they we need to be chipping in with goals from all areas of the pitch and not rely on one individual.

Delighted to get my first home win as manager, I thought we should have won last week without being too disrespectful of Albion Rovers we dominated the game for long periods and had a number of opportunities to win the match and on another day we would have won the game, delighted where we are sitting within touching distance of Livingston and Brechin City and those two teams have won again today, so that shows you how important our result today was.

Next week we will face Queen of the South in the Irn-Bru Cup and we will treat the game like any other and go down there and give a good account of ourselves, it will be a tough match, they have been sitting in the top area of the Championship for a while, I know they have had a little bit of a dip in form of late but we certainly don’t want to be the team that encourages them back to winning ways, so we will look to go down there and give another good account of ourselves, the boys will certainly not fear them that is for sure, that’s the kind of message that I always try to get across to them, we have players that are capable of playing at a higher level and that’s testament to the squad Jack Ross put together in his time here, which can get us out of this league and compete in the league above so we will go down and face Queen of the South and put on another good performance.