Gayfield's lowest home crowd for many years (328) for a league fixture held under veryn decent conditions for football
Arbroath lined up with the only change in the starting lineup Flyer (in for Rennie) and Scott and Doris starting up front. Weir's policy of early subs saw Ross, Hislop and Rennie all come on early enough in the 2nd half.
It looked like business as usual when we failed to clear a Carrigan corner from the left and the ball broke to Brown Ferguson to fire it home, with the aid of deflections (I think). This was a setback for our brittle confidence and Alloa tok charge playing the ball around comfortbly out of defence and trhough the midfifeld- but without creating major chances
We had one or two promising positions as Scott an Doris worked positions but were generally crwoded out by a solid Alloa defence. The keeper had little to do but we should have done better - or had better luck
Second half saw Ross replace Sellars, clearly struggling first half. Spirits fell further as, with the first attack of the second half , Alloa broek through Bishops challenge on the right and after Hill stopped, Agnew cleverly bakheeled the ball in to the net
It looked like yet another home capitulation but we kept trying to get into the game but finding if difficult to win the ball, hold the ball let alne thread pass through
Finally a bit of luck as a mxup between Walker and Scott in the Alloa defence allowed Hislop to nip in smartly and clot a colly taken goal under the diving keeper.
A little belief flooded back and we had theupper hand for the next 10 minutes. then Doris strated on a run into the box on the right and was hacked down by Walker (?). Spurred by hisgoal, Hislop seixzed the ball and despatched it for an unlikely equaliser.
Against the odds we were level. Alloa had been coasting and were stung back into action and dominated the final 20 minutes. We couldn't get hold of the ball. In one set piece a header from an Alloa atacker bounced off our post but generally our defence (with Rennie replacing Bishop) held firm.
This was definitely 2 points dropped for Alloa who had the upper hand most of the game and looked to be in the comfort zone. But finally, something broke for us and we had enough spirit and determination to capitalise. Great to see two deserved goals for Steven Hislop who works hard but has not had te breaks
We;re still second bottom but maybe that breaks the Gayfield hoodoo