Top of the table for Fife but boss Young remains calm

FORFAR 1 EAST FIFE 2

East Fife sit proudly top of League One this week after coming from behind to beat stuttering Forfar Athletic.

But manager Darren Young – while rightly enjoying the rewards for his side’s efforts is refusing to get carried away.

“I’m delighted to be sitting top of the table, but it is early days,” he said.

“We are not getting excited, we will take it one day at a time.

“We will go up to Montrose next week full of confidence. That’s three wins on the bounce now and hopefully we will continue from where we left off today.

“For me, the teams that we have in the league this season make it the toughest one yet. It is the fifth year now in this league and probably the hardest one yet. Last year we got more points than the season before but finished a position lower, the season before that we got more points too but finished a position lower.

“We have got part-time teams and full-time teams and teams with bigger budgets but we know everyone will be in the mix.

“We know we will take a dip at some point but we have players to call upon and I am sure they will do it for us.”

It was a dour start to the match and it wasn’t until the half hour mark that the first chance of note fell to East Fife’s Anton Dowds when he made space for a shot from the edge of the box that had keeper Marc McCallum scrambling to turn the ball behind for a corner.

Jordan Kirkpatrick then headed off his own goal line to deny Ross Dunlop before McCallum made a wonder save to turn Chris Higgins’ goalbound header round the post.

However, it was Forfar who made the breakthrough, out of the blue, four minutes from the interval.

Ross Forbes picked up possession 20 yards out and hit an early bouncing shot that caught Jordan Hart on the hop and the ball nestled into the net off the post.

The Fifers were on level terms in the 60th minute when Scott Agnew was allowed to steal into the Forfar box and stab the ball under the exposed McCallum.

Less than two minutes later the game was turned completely on its head when Dowds fired Fife ahead, hammering home an unstoppable 25-yard shot.

Forfar boss Jim Weir has called upon his side to put in a far improved performance on the back of recent outings and he admitted that his players hadn’t delivered.

“Losing is obviously sore but I’d say the performance was sorest again. The warning signs were there over the last couple of weeks.

“One or two were happy that we’d only lost one goal in four games but when your goalkeeper has been playing the way he has, it just can’t go on.

“What has been a really good start two weeks into the season, we can forget all about that now.

“I know myself that I have got a good squad of players in there but at the minute, we are not playing as a good team.

“It is a massive confidence thing, you can see that. I made a couple of changes today with players who didn’t play last week and it didn’t quite work.

“It gave a wake-up call to one or two and for one or two who have come to the club that we need a bit more.

“But with three weeks left of a window, I will be looking to try and freshen it up.

“What we have served up the last three league games has been really, really disappointing.”

Anton Dowds in action for East Fife. Picture: SNS