Reds ready for the Honest Men

Apr 3 2009

STIRLING Albion will attempt to inflict Ayr United’s first home defeat of the season when they take on the Second Division leaders at Somerset Park tomorrow (Saturday).

It’s a massive game for both clubs, with the Binos just two points adrift of fourth-placed Peterhead in the race for the play-offs and Ayr one clear of Raith in the battle for the title, writes David Ogilvie.

Albion go into the match on the back of a 2-0 home victory over East Fife while Brian Reid’s side ran out easy 4-1 winners at bottom club Stranraer on Saturday and are unbeaten since early February when they went down 3-2 on Alloa’s plastic pitch.

The Honest Men were held 0-0 by Peterhead in their most recent home game and a point would be a good result for Albion, who will hope that Alloa can take points off the Blue Toon at Recreation Park and Queen’s Park can upset Brechin at Glebe Park.

Binos boss Allan Moore said: “It’s obviously a difficult game going down to Ayr but I’m hoping they will not be looking forward to playing us. We had a good result against East Fife on Saturday when I thought we controlled the game.

“It was good to have Andy Graham back and that allowed Ross Forsyth to return to left back where I think he is stronger than in the middle. We should have beaten Queen’s Park the week before but we paid the price for missed chances.”

Spilled

Albion are unbeaten against Ayr this season, with two draws followed by a 2-0 victory at Forthbank in January, and Brechin remain the only top-six side to have got the better of Stirling in 2008-09.

It’s against the teams in the lower reaches where too many points have been spilled and Moore admitted: “I don’t really know why that is but we could easily have another 10 points and that wouldn’t just have us in the play-offs – we would have been right up there challenging with Raith and Ayr.”

A stunning John O’Neill strike earned the Binos a 1-1 draw on their last journey to the south west in October but it won’t be easy to breach an Ayr defence who have conceded just two goals in the last seven games but will be without on-loan centre-half Kevin James who returned to St Johnstone ahead of the March 31 deadline.

Moore is likely to name a similar side to the one that shut out East Fife but Liam Corr – who missed out at the weekend after breaking his nose in training – should be able to return. Sean Roycroft sat out part of Tuesday’s session due to a tight hamstring but is expected to be fit to partner Scott Gibb. Nathan Taggart and Chris Hamilton remain sidelined.

Meanwhile, Albion have received a boost with the news that striker Martin Grehan will not now miss next weekend’s home game with struggling Stranraer.

Confirmed

It had been feared the ex-Motherwell man would be hit with a one-game ban following his booking against East Fife but the SFA have confirmed that it was only a one-point offence – most yellow cards come with three disciplinary points – and so he avoided going through the 18-point threshold despite a sixth caution of the campaign.

Midfielder Mark Docherty is also walking a suspension tightrope and Moore has warned his players not to pick up unnecessary bookings in the run-in.

He said: “It’s good that we have Martin available for next week but I’ve had a word with him because that’s not the first yellow card he has had for non-football reasons if you like. I don’t mind players being booked for making tackles but kicking the ball away is not acceptable. We want to get to the play-offs but we don’t want to be losing players should we get there.”