Pars left lamenting the blues

Bene - “2-0 up with three minutes to go, no matter what level of football you shouldn’t be giving away two goals.”

After Rhys Breen and Nikolay Todorov had accepted Josh Edwards’ crosses to send the Pars 2-0 up on Saturday, most would have thought that would be enough to see off the side that sat bottom of the table. Peterhead who had won their last league game but lost heavily to lower league Elgin City in the SPFL Trust Trophy last week, had other thoughts.

With nothing to lose their management team of Jim McInally and Davie Nicholls moved Jason Brown forward and it was the Blue Toon stalwart who started the remarkable recovery to draw the match. Dunfermline captain, Kyle Benedictus expressed just how disappointed he and the players felt:-

“We are extremely disappointed, it feels like a defeat just now. We were 2-0 up with only three minutes to go and you need to see the game out. Unfortunately we never did that. It is two points dropped at the end of the day but we need to get our heads up and go again.

“Our performance was not anywhere near the standard that we have set this season. No matter how bad you play, you are going to get games like that in this league. It is going to happen. We have found ourselves 2-0 up with three minutes to go and it is extremely disappointing the way that it has turned out in the end.”

Kyle described how Peterhead’s first goal benefited from the break of the ball:-

“It was the second phase at a throw in. The boy has gone to shoot and I have slide tackled to clear it. It has hit their boy, hit Breeny and rolled across the goal and the boy has tapped it in. Somethings you just cannot control but even at 2-1 up, you need to see the game out.”

The match was well into the five minutes added on when the equaliser silenced the KDM Group East End Park and Kyle claimed that it was sloppy to give away the free kick that allowed Andrew Macdonald to swing over the ball that Michael Hewitt headed home:-

“That is one of our downfalls, we seem to give away a lot of free kicks that allows oppositions to put the ball in our box. We need to learn not to give away free kicks at that point in games. Obviously we have paid the consequences in the late goal.

“I don’t know what happened. It went over my head, I just saw the ball go into the net but it must have been a good finish because it went into the sidenetting.”

The loss of two late goals was a stinging shock to a team with such a good defensive record and Kyle agreed that had set them in good stead throughout the season so far, he added:-

“It just shows you what can happen in football. There is not much to say other than it is extremely disappointing, we just need to get up and go again.”

There have been a lot of good performances by James McPake’s team this season but both he and Kyle agreed that this was not one of them:-

“2-0 up with three minutes to go, no matter what level of football you shouldn’t be giving away two goals. We will look at it back and see if there were things that could have been done differently but one of the things is stopping giving away free kicks in dangerous areas. That is not just at the end of the game, it seems to happen throughout the game.

“Sometimes you don’t need to win the ball all the time. I think we all have a tendency to try and win the ball and sometimes the best thing is just to let the player go back. That is exactly what could have happened towards the free kick that the second goal came from.”

Immediately after the match Kyle’s disappointment could not be lightened in any way by reminding him of the Pars unbeaten record that now extends to eight league matches:-

“It is right after the game so I’m going to be disappointed and when you look at it we could have been three points clear at the top of the league.

“We are still unbeaten. It is four wins and four draws, at any level it is a good record to have but you can see how tight the league is. From first to seventh it is extremely tight but if we can turn these recent draws into wins, cut out the mistakes like the ones today, we can keep it going.

“We are still top of the league but that is one win in the last five and we have drawn four. We need to start winning again and we need to go again because next week will be a tough game away to Alloa. It is always a tough game.”

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