Alloa Athletic did all they could in their final league game by beating Cowdenbeath 3-1 only to lose the Championship on goal difference. Having had our fate in our own hands with four games to go, the season now goes all the way to the Promotion Play Offs, if “The Wasps” are to join Stirling Albion in Division One next season. The game is all about ifs and buts, but as the game ended at Recreation Park on Saturday, it was agony awaiting the four final minutes of playing time at Glebe Park knowing a goal for Brechin City would bring the trophy to Recreation Park. We now must take this performance into the play offs and if we show that level of commitment, hopefully we will still progress through Play Offs, although devasted to lose title on goal difference the players are still determined to clinch promotion through the play offs.

Wednesday 5th May at Central Park Cowdenbeath  v. Alloa Athletic (7.45pm)

Saturday 8th May at Recreation Park Alloa Aletic v. Cowdenbeath (3.00pm)

Play Off Semi Finals will be played in two legs.

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allan maitland after title heartbreak

I would like to start first and foremost by congratulating Stirling Albion, the team that wins the league is always the team that deserves it and they have just been that bit better than us this year. Congratulations to Allan Moore and all his team and everyone associated with Stirling Albion. From our point of view I look at our season and I look back to 5 years ago when we were in the relegation play offs and I think that season we ended up with 32 points and now this season we are in the promotion play offs on 65 points so the difference in the last 5 years has been huge for me, we are making strides in the right direction and now have two massive games against a really good Cowdenbeath side who caused us lots of problems today – and they had the luxury of resting some of their players – Gareth Wardlaw, Paul McQuade and Joe Mbu. They will obviously be fresh for Wednesday nights game whereas we have now Stuart Noble, Scot Buist and Mark Gilhaney, all really struggling for the game after picking up injuries today – unfortunately we will not be in great shape for the game with Brown Ferguson and Mark Brown struggling as well– people are asking will we be down after not winning the league – and the answer to that is quite simply no – I think we have done our bit today, we have got ourselves into a situation where we are back to winning football matches which is vital, I think the other thing is that when we look at our season we feel as though we have had a really good season we slipped up the last three games and I accept that but to be fair I thought we played reasonably well at Peterhead, but not picking up points in previous three games has cost us. We now have something else to look forward to, we have a completely new challenge and we need to make sure that we are ready for that. I am delighted with the players today, I thought that Andy Scott in particular was excellent, Bryan Prunty was superb as well. If we can just keep putting the ball into dangerous areas we will go on and see if we can get ourselves into the final. The last thing I would say is that young Jamie Hay came on today, he has been out on loan to Bo’ness for most of the season, he came in today and I thought he made a huge difference for us, with good energy, got on the ball, made passes, didn’t seem to have any of the anxiety that other people had and helped us enormously. Motivation is a funny thing to talk about – it has to come from within and if you had seen us playing the last three weeks you wouldn’t have thought that we were motivated. We shouldn’t have needed any more motivation than the opportunity to win the league and we have only really started playing in that vain in the last 25 minutes of today’s game. From our point of view I don’t see motivation as being a problem during the play offs. We have done our bit and won our game again and hopefully that has got the bad spell out of the way. I am pleased with the players, pleased for everybody, but disappointed not to win the league – it’s always difficult when you lose out on goal difference but from our point of view the most important thing was that we won today – if we had lost and they had won the league if we hadn’t done our bit – that would have been worse. I was pleased with the players today.

The Wasps today suffered their first back to back defeat at Recreation Park this season, when they lost 2-1 to Dumbarton, who themselves still had an outside chance of sneaking into the end of season play-off’s. In fairness Dumbarton started the best and had the Alloa defence under early pressure, an early booking after only 15 minutes was too prove costly for David McClune, Dumbarton opened the scoring after 31 minutes through David Winters and six minutes later McClune was issued with his second yellow of the day and Alloa were reduced to ten men, however in the second period Alloa did equalise after a good run into the box by young Declan McAvoy but he was impeded by Chris Smith, Andy Scott made no mistake from the spot, game on. At this stage Alloa had gained the upper hand and had chances to go ahead but ex Alloa keeper Michael White pulled off some outstanding saves to deny the Alloa attack. On 64 minutes ex Inverness CT striker Dennis Wyness scored after hesitancey in the Alloa defence. In the end the team showed great spirit but fell short in such an important game. We now have two games left, next Saturday away to Perhead and a final day home fixture against Cowdenbeath, games the team will surely need to win to give themselves a chance of winning the title. However with Stirling Albion winning 3-1 at Ochilview today our local rivals know they could win the title if they remain unbeaten in their final four matches. It has been a great season for “The Wasps” but we now need one final push if we are to win the title.

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allan maitland after dumbarton game

It’s a strange time to start losing home games, but that comes with anxiety of being at the top of the league, today we came against a Dumbarton side that I thought played really well, particularly in the first half and deservedly went ahead, but I am expecting my experienced players to get us through these days and what I don’t expect is my experienced players to get themselves sent off so quickly after having been booked and I think that absolutely killed us. In the second half we showed great spirit and got ourselves back into the game with a penalty kick which looked a soft one – I thought we had two better claims after that to be fair, I thought Stuart Noble had a great chance but Michael White made a great save on the line and at that time we had the momentum of the game – we then lost a really strange and soft goal when we should have cleared it –however, it needed a good shout and someone to take charge, but we didn’t clear it properly and they scored and as people say goals change games and that’s exactly what happened. Dumbarton then looked as though they could have scored a third goal and it became more difficult for us but we still have spirit and as long as we still have spirit we still have a chance. We now have a situation where we know we need to go to Peterhead and win, then we have got to try and beat Cowdenbeath and obviously hope that Stirling Albion slip up in the meantime. It was always going to be a difficult game today as it has been against Dumbarton all season, if we don’t win the league it won’t be because we can’t beat Dumbarton, it will be because we have not done enough ourselves. We had got ourselves into a great position and in the last two weeks for whatever reason we have not started the games until we went behind and I think that is exactly what happened today, but we have got spirit and still believe and I have told the guys to go out tonight and have a blow out and get it out of their system and we will come back and train on Tuesday and Thursday and will hopefully go to Peterhead and do better. It’s fair to say today was disappointing and I don’t think we have got anybody to blame but ourselves.

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).

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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.