Cove Rangers 1 Forfar Athletic 0

Betfred Cup, Group B

Saturday 14 November 2020

Balmoral Stadium, Altens

The Loons Betfred Cup campaign ended yesterday with a narrow defeat to Cove Rangers at the Balmoral Stadium.

In a week where penalty kicks have been in the headlines, one such kick was all that separated the two sides at the final whistle. That Cove goal came in the 68th minute when Rory McAllister converted from the spot after Daniel Hoban had brought him down in the area. Despite that the Forfar keeper had an excellent afternoon making a series of high-quality saves, including one from an earlier Mitch Megginson penalty. Stuart Malcolm was quick to praise Hoban, “Daniel has a superb afternoon pulling off some great saves including the first penalty. It was unfortunate with the second penalty, but I cannot fault his effort and commitment since he has come into the team.”

As the match went on Forfar’s performance looked set to realise more than the league encounter had done the week before. Although the Loons played the last ten minutes with ten men, after Sam Fisher was sent off for a second yellow card offence, they could have secured what would have been a merited equaliser in the closing minutes. In a frenetic period, the home side’s Ryan Strachan made two goal-line clearances to deny the Loons a point and the chance to take the tie to a penalty shoot-out for the bonus point. The first clearance came from a superb Murray Mackintosh shot and then Strachan was again in the right place at the right time to prevent a goal from a Florent Hoti curling corner. Jordan Allan and Jack Mackenzie both had chances to level the tie in a spirited close to the match, but time ran out for the Loons.

Malcolm was pleased with the chances created especially in the closing stages. “Murray gets into great areas and he’s not frightened to pull the trigger as we saw on Tuesday night. Jordan comes on and has great shots – he’s a real thorn in the side of centre-halves – always trying to find a way to get a shot at goal and I think the longer the game went on we were the most likely to score.”

Malcolm was again full of praise for the young side for their efforts, saying, “I thought we should come away from the game with a draw at least. Albeit we had to defend for parts of the game, especially in the first half we did so very well. I thought our shape out of possession and work rate was excellent once again. We are trying to find that winning formula. It’s small steps forward but we do feel like we are getting there, and it was one error which cost us today. I won’t have anyone criticise those young lads. They were never all meant to be in a team altogether – we built a squad to allow us to have a mix of youth and experience but we’ve not managed to see that in action across a number of games. It’s a huge learning curve for them. But even in saying that they are doing very well, and I could not ask for more from them.”

Malcolm paid special tribute to Cole Starrs who made his professional debut, coming onto replace Bobby Barr in the 81st minute.

Looking back at the Cup competition, it was fitting in these strange times to have had an eventful series of matches, or in the case of the opening fixture uneventful! With that match against Dundee forfeited due to Covid, the Loons then lost out to a late goal by Premiership Hibs back in October and earlier this week secured two points with a penalty shoot-out win over Brora Rangers after a 3-3 draw in ninety minutes.

It’s back to league action at Station Park this Saturday when the Loons will be aiming to get the first win of the season. With a few of the injured players (Daniel Scally, Ross Meechan and Marc McCallum) due back at training this week, the management team will have a number of decisions to make for the team to face Airdrieonians.