Difficult day for Cowden rearguard

COWDENBEATH 1 STIRLING ALBION 4

Cowdenbeath boss Gary Bollan slammed his side’s defending, which he felt made things all too easy for Stirling Albion to pick them off on Saturday.

After making a good start and creating chances, Cowdenbeath were slack in trying to close down Dylan Bikey after 12 minutes as he opened the scoring and then five minutes later home central defender Jamie Todd got in a fankle at a through ball and allowed Daryl Duffy to lob keeper Josh Rae.

Although Fraser Mullen pulled one back on 31 minutes with a free-kick, within five minutes some poor home marking at a corner allowed Duffy to make it 3-1 at half-time.

A fourth goal on the hour from Max Wright, also due to some really poor errors from the

Blues, and Chris Hamilton’s red card four minutes later summed up the day for the Fifers.

Bollan said: “As a team our defending was terrible and we gifted Stirling all four goals.

“While we were going forward well and creating a lot of chances and their keeper was making some really good saves, we handed them two goals in the first 20 minutes with hesitancy and not winning second balls.

“We scored a good goal to get back into the game and within a few minutes we are very slack with our marking at a corner and suddenly we are two in arrears at half-time.

“Within 15 minutes of the second half we make four bad mistakes which allows the Stirling striker to get through, but at that our keeper gets a strong hand to it but cannot keep it out.”

The result has pushed Stirling into the race for the top-four places on 32 points, four behind third-placed Cowden, and manager Kevin Rutkiewicz was encouraged by the way his team battled back from their heavy loss to Queen’s Park last week.

He said: “It is good to be closing in on the top four but it is such a really competitive division and there are probably five teams playing for two places.”

Brechin City’s game with Annan Athletic was postponed.

Fraser Mullen: Scored Cowden’s goal from a free-kick.