The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
It’s hard to take for midfield player Reilly
Thomas Reilly admits the hardest part of slipping out of the League 2 promotion contention is knowing Elgin City only have themselves to blame.
The former St Mirren midfielder blamed silly results before Saturday’s costly draw at home to Edinburgh City for damaging chances of making the play-offs.
The Moray men have competed all season, promising much with some fine performances and results, before fading at the crucial juncture. Reilly, though, insists that while there is still faint hope the Black and Whites will battle on.
The 23-year-old said: “It is our own fault we haven’t made the playoff places. We were in it for a large part of the season but our away form, with silly results and not winning games
“We just have to try to finish the season on a high”
at home we should be winning, put us in a position that is way out of our hands now.
“We just have to try to finish the season on a high. We’ve two games left and it’s against the two teams pushing to win the league. It would be good to go and beat them in those games but it’s a tough finish.
“Whatever happens, we will come again, regroup this week and concentrate on the Peterhead game.
“It’s never done until its done but right now the feeling is horrible, knowing you’ve chucked it away yourself. We just haven’t done the job ourselves.”
City had chances to win it and that made it all the more agonising for Reilly, who added: “The keeper pulled off an unbelievable save from my shot. We went close. Declan Byrne had a chance and couldn’t have hit his attempt any better. It was very frustrating all round.”
ELGIN CITY EDINBURGH CITY
E1 1
lgin City manager Gavin Price admits his players need a series of fortunate events to resurrect hopes of a League 2 play-off spot after failing to beat Edinburgh City at home on Saturday.
Gareth Rodger’s second-half header cancelled out an early Elgin opener from Shane Sutherland in a game Price knew his side had to win.
With only two games left to play, the Borough Briggs men slipped down to sixth in the table, three points behind fourth top Stenhousemuir, who have two games in hand.
Perhaps more importantly, they sit a full six points behind Stirling Albion, who have also played 34 matches.
Price, who did all he could to urge his team to victory, stressed: “We won’t give up until it is mathematically impossible, but I think we’ve got too much to do now.
“I was quite disappointed at half-time. I didn’t think we were quite at it as much as we could have been and we were slightly fortunate to be a goal ahead.
“We needed to give more in the second half if we were going to see the game out.
“Once we conceded the goal to go back to 1-1, we probably played our best part in the game in the last 20 to 25 minutes.
“Whether or not we did enough or created enough chances to win it, I don’t know.
“It’s still possible for us but not by a clear-cut margin. It would take a very fortunate sequence of events to get us back in it but we’ll keep going.
“It could be out of our hands before next week’s game if Stenny beat Berwick in midweek.”
It took Elgin less than three minutes to go in front when the ball broke to striker Sutherland on the edge of the box and he crashed a volley home.
On-loan St Mirren winger Nathan Flanagan was unlucky not to add a second on 21 minutes, firing Chris McLeish’s pass off the base of the post from 20 yards.
Edinburgh keeper Calum Antell made a fine save from Darryl McHardy’s volley just minutes before the break.
The visitors levelled when Rodger was given a free header at a corner and powered it home from close range.
Antell made another good stop a minute later to keep out Sutherland’s overhead kick at full stretch.
Elgin needed a winner to keep their play-off hopes alive and sub Declan Byrne rattled the bar with a close range strike on 82 minutes.
Antell’s heroics in the Edinburgh goal continued as he got down to push a last-minute Thomas Reilly volley on to the post to earn his side a point.