Battling Threave Rovers display against league leaders Thorn Athletic goes unrewarded
A battling Threave Rovers display ultimately went unrewarded on Saturday.
The Castle Douglas side twice fought back against West of Scotland League third division leaders Thorn Athletic only for a late goal to consign them to a 3-2 defeat.
Gaffer Danny Dunglinson said: “Before the game we’d have said a point was maybe not the worst result.
“The way the game was going, we should maybe have, hung on and taken what we’d got and just shut up shop.
“The goals we conceded were pretty poor – the first one is a slack past and the other two are reactions in the box or simple mistakes.
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“That’s football – if there’s no mistakes, there’s no goals. There’s no blame to any individual, we all make mistakes – it’s just unfortunate the boys made mistakes and were punished straight away.”
Thorn led after just four minutes from Euan Rodger but Dylan Cairnie cancelled that out just before the break.
Threave keeper Sam Henderson saved a penalty early in the second half but Thorn soon retook the lead through Cammy Dalling.
Harry Officer levelled things up again but Thorn weren’t to be denied with Lewis Steele bagging a late winner.
Dunglinson said: “They’re not top of the league for no reason.
“I think they maybe just shaded it - I spoke to their manager after and that was the assessment I gave him that they probably just about deserved to win.
“It was one of those ones that could have gone either way. It was a tight game – at 1-1 or 2-2 if we’d got the next goal we’d have gone on to win but it just didn’t happen.
“We scored to make it 1-1 and for the next five minutes or so we were on top, but it was the only period I felt we were on top.
“We had a couple of missed chances and one of those days where decision making wasn’t great.
“It’s not the end of the world, it’s only one defeat. “
Threave’s under-20s were also in action on Saturday as they fulfilled the club’s South of Scotland Challenge Cup clash, losing 4-2 at home to Stranraer.
This weekend the Threave first team are back at Meadow Park, with bottom side Wishaw the visitors.
Dunglinson said: “They’ve obviously had a difficult start and changed manager. We played them up there and the conditions weren’t great, the pitch was pretty poor, but they were in the game for a spell. We just couldn’t break them down.
