Bairns red certs to survive

Paul Hartley praised his deadly strike force as Falkirk eased any relegation fears with a routine win over nine-man City.

The Bairns’ cruise coupled with Dumbarton’s 3- 0 defeat to Livingston opened up a 10-point gap between the relegation play- off rivals.

Brechin had to play the second half with nine men. Sean Crighton started the rot when he was was shown red for a wild lunge on Alex Jakubiak on the 40 minute mark.

And teammate Paul McLean was sent off for a late tackle just two minutes later.

Falkirk were already cruising towards victory following Aaron Muirhead’s fine composed solo goal and Craig Sibbald’s close-range finish.

Andrew Nelson increased the lead on the hour when he hammered home a loose ball from 10 yards.

An already relegated Brechin did well to weather the storm to prevent yet another embarrassing result.

Hartley said: “We were excellent in the first- half. It was a strange game the second-half, they made it really difficult for us.”

The Falkirk boss also refused to rule out the possibility of getting drawn back into a relegation scrap.

He added: “We’ve not done the job yet, we’ve still got seven games to go but we’ve seen progress since the turn of the year.”

Darren Dods was proud of his players’ effort second-half.

He said: “The second sending off for me wasn’t a red card offence but these things happen. With nine men to go out there for 45 minutes and only lose one goal was a phenomenal effort.”