Finishing in style

Scoring his 17th and 18th goals of the season, Craig Wighton sealed Pars promotion

When it comes to clinching a league title Dunfermline Athletic certainly showed how to do it on Saturday. Needing one win from their last four league games, they grasped the opportunity and competed the task in style with the 5-0 thrashing of Queen of the South. The Doonhamers were the League One form team, undefeated in their last six but they were no match for a team wanting to get the party started in front of their own crowd.

Striker Craig Wighton scored two of the five goals and he felt that his side had probably saved their best home performance for one of their biggest games of the season:-

“I am delighted with that, we thoroughly deserved it and over the course of the season we have been brilliant. It is a nice way to finish it off and get the job done.”

Craig felt that he might have scored more than the two goals he did but explained that his legs went towards the end:-

“As soon as the fifth sub was used I started cramping up. I could have scored another one on another day but I’m happy with a couple of goals. Big Lewis (McCann) did brilliantly for my first goal and the second goal just came with my instinct to get in at the back post.

“We said at half time that we had been two goals up at home before against Peterhead and we switched off, so it was important not to do that. We knew when we got the third goal that it killed the game, we were just lucky that we got it quite early on and we could just enjoy the last twenty minutes.”

Craig signed a new two year deal in the lead up to the Queens game and looking back over his season the 25 year old is pleased with his 18 goals haul from his 39 appearances, and feels that his overall play has been good as well:-

“I can still improve, whatever I get this season will be my target to beat next. I’m enjoying my football and hopefully I can keep scoring goals and we keep doing what we are doing.”

Craig missed the second half of last season at Dunfermline and the disastrous play-offs after bizarrely being loaned out by the club at the foot of the Championship table to the club at the top of it. Joe Chalmers, Kevin O’Hara, Matty Todd, Lewis McCann and Aaron Comrie all felt the hurt of that final play-off knock out to Queens Park and Craig revealed that James McPake had used that as an incentive:-

“The manager said that before the game -‘remember how we felt last year, enjoy every minute of this’. I think we did and you see what the fans are like when you give them something to cheer about. Obviously last year we didn’t do that enough but when we are playing the way we are and they are behind us it is a tough place to come. I think Queen of the South probably felt that.”

The promotion is a success for the policy adopted by James McPake and Dave Mackay. The word promotion was only introduced to comments this week and Craig believed the approach had been right:-

“The management team wanted us to take it one game at a time. Within the club we knew what we wanted to do. There have maybe been other clubs who have spoken a bit too much in the press but we have kept it in-house. We have just got on with our job, we have won it very comfortably and it could have been by a bigger margin in my opinion.”

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