Ger's thoughts on emphatic win on the road

I’ve honestly been desperate to sit down and praise these lads from start to finish. So for this after match chat, that’s exactly what I’ll be doing.

Last weekend I felt we stabilised somewhat against Coldstream so this weekend’s focus was solely concentrated on pushing forward. And to be fair, to a man they more than stood up to the task. I felt the boys got exactly what they deserved in yesterday’s emphatic win over a tough Newburgh side. Making a couple of changes from last weekend, we welcomed a little bit more experience back into the starting eleven with Gregor (Lamb) and Grado (Grant Wilson). I think this once again shows the depth to our squad when we have everyone available. Once we settled down and found our rhythm I felt we then began to take control. We’ve been working intensely with the forward players over the last few weeks on more position specific movements at the top end of the pitch, so when Macca (Luke MacLean) pops up between the posts I was delighted for him as he calmly finishes off a really good move to set us on our way. The young man has been fantastic for us over the past few weeks so the way he takes his second later on in the game once again shows the confidence that he is playing with right now. It was a really powerful individual goal. In between this Mikey (Bardhi) scores a magnificent second from 25 plus yards to put a further distance between the sides.

Football however is always the teacher, last weekend the parallels were drawn. We found ourselves basically in the exact same position with a two-nil advantage going into the second half. The reiteration however, without going into too deeply, was that in no way was this game over. And to the lads’ credit, even after the tough run we keep going on about, they never once looked like faltering in what was a really composed performance from back to front. Macca gets his second and our third at a really good time and we then have to box clever for ten minutes as Newburgh threw bodies forward. The only blemish is that we concede a penalty. After watching the footage back it quite clearly isn’t. The ball cannons off one of their players who looks to be in an offside position and we have to react. There’s no disappointment here though, at our level these things happen and we can only control the controllable as they say, so it was all about our reaction. Again, I’m proud of the lads for their response. Harry (McGill) probably found himself a little unlucky to fall out the starting eleven but again he shows his character by coming into the game and having a real impact. So again I was delighted that his effort was rewarded with a goal after pressing down the game late on for us.

Games like yesterday I could honestly go through the whole team and praise them individually as they’d no doubt deserve it however I felt Naz (McDonald) stood up and showed the battling qualities that we need for this division week in week out. He literally put everything on the line for his teammates yesterday so again this can only breed confidence for himself and the group going forward.

Going forward, it probably sums up our league campaign a little this season. We seem to build up a bit of momentum and then we are faced with a really tough away cup fixture. The Rosyth game however will take care of itself and then we find ourselves frustratingly idle with a weekend off. What this does gives us though is the opportunity to work with the boys on the training ground, and that’s exactly what we intend on doing. We need to keep pushing this thing forward.