MATCH STATS

FALKIRK continued to hold the upper hand in their long-running and often bitter rivalry with Dunfermline, but more important than bragging rights were the three points they grabbed.

Having taken just one point from their opening three fixtures, the Bairns have now won five games out of six, and manager Peter Houston noted: “We’re ahead of the points target we set despite a bad start, but I’ll only look at the league table in January because there’s a long way to go.

“The Falkirk-Dunfermline game is a huge one for the fans, so I’m delighted with the result. You’re never going to be totally dominant in a derby, but I think we deserved to win. We scored two great goals and had chances to kill the game off, but their goal changed things and it was a bit hairy at times near the end.”

Falkirk dominated early on, and strikers John Baird and Bob McHugh both got in behind the visitors’ defence, but the offside flag and then keeper Sean Murdoch came to their rescue.

Myles Hippolyte also failed to connect with an acrobatic volley, but Dunfermline weathered the storm and slowly worked their way into the contest.

Former Bairns forward Farid El Alagui glanced an angled header towards goal, and in the 20th minute home keeper Danny Rogers pulled off a crucial block from skipper Andy Geggan.

The Pars kept pressing, and Kallum Higginbotham ought to have done better when a cross found him unmarked at the post.

Craig Sibbald’s 27th minute opener, and especially the soft nature of it, deflated Dunfermline for the remainder of the first half and Sibbald almost bagged a second shortly before the break.

Hippolyte did double Falkirk’s lead early in the second period when he eased past a series of powder-puff challenges before beating Murdoch from just outside the penalty area.

Murdoch’s heroics prevented utter humiliation for the Fifers, who threatened to salvage an unlikely point when El Alagui’s calm finish set up a jittery final 14 minutes.