The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Pars’ character to the fore, says Dow
Dunfermline have been touted as one of the teams most likely to challenge H e a r t s f o r t h e Championship title – and that sentiment was underlined when the Pars racked up an impressive victory in their league opener against Inverness Caley Thistle on Saturday.
The Fifers recovered from the loss of an early goa l to f ight back power fully and inflic t a 3 -1 defeat on the Highlanders, a team who are also expected to be in the mix for a play-off place next May.
Former Dundee United attacker Ryan Dow fired home the crucial second goal and reflected on the resilience which his side had demonstrated as they laid down a significant early season marker.
“It was a tough game, especially when we went 1-0 down early on,” said the frontman, who has also played for Ross County and Peterhead.
“The boys showed a lot of character to come back and win the game and to score three goals was different class.
“It ’ s always good to record that first league win.
“It took us a while to do that last season but this result gets the monkey off our backs and takes the pressure off us a bit.
“As there are only 27 games this season it’s really important to get off to a flier.
“We equalised through Euan Murray from a setpiece which is something we’ve been working on and I felt we were a lot better in the second half after we got to grips with their formation.
“Personally, it was great to get my first goal but I don’t really care who scores so long as the team wins.”
The Pars were stunned when Caley took the lead less than two minutes after ref Willie Collum’s whistle signalled the start of the league campaign.
Bulgarian striker Nikolay Todorov drove the ball past Owain Fon Williams after latching on to Daniel MacKay’s low cross.
Todorov had to leave the field shortly afterwards due to injury and the home side equalised on 20 minutes when club captain Murray headed home from a Dom Thomas cross.
Dow gave the home side the lead with a close range effort 12 minutes from time and Declan Mc Ma n u s secured the points late in the game with a well-struck 20-yarder.
Pars boss Stevie Crawford indicated that this was the strongest squad he had worked with since taking over at East End Park – and Dow was quick to echo his manager’s views.
“We’ve signed a lot good players” he said.
“We did have a good team last season but we could be a wee bit inconsistent at times. We’ve lost a few players as well, the main one being Kevin Nisbet, but there are a lot of good options in the squad we have now.
“These are exciting times for us – we’re exciting to watch going forward and I’m sure the fans will feel the same.”
Caley Jags boss John Robertson felt slack defending for the Pars’ first two goals allowed Crawford’s men to profit from a game he believed was firmly in the balance.
He said: “It was our failure to deal with setplays. We spoke to the lads
of
about how dangerous Paul Watson and especially Euan Mu r r a y, whose goalscoring return has been superb, are in the air.
“For him to get a free header for the first one is disappointing . For the second one we accept losing a header in the box, but the other lads had to make sure they stuck with their runners. Not one player but two players didn’t do that after a great save from Mark Ridgers.
“Up until Dunfermline’s second goal I thought we had got to the stage where it looked like the next goal would be the winner. With 15 minutes to go both teams were probing, but I don’t think either team was doing enough to get the winner at that time.”