East Kilbride Thistle captain David Gray says his side dug in deep to edge out Kello Rovers 5-4 in the West of Scotland League Third Division on Saturday.
Gray was delighted with the performance, particularly as it came after a bruising 8-2 defeat at giants Darvel in the South Challenge Cup second round.
And the fifth goal proved to be crucial, as Kello bagged a fourth after Matty Gray was red-carded late in the game.
Gray said: “Although we let four goals in, we probably felt we were the better team throughout.
“I didn’t really feel that they had a major spell, they caught us in the break after we had scored, for most of their goals.
“There were a couple of things that we could have done an awful lot better, but it was a chalk and cheese performance from the week before.
“We started quite well, had a lot of the ball and a few chances, and they scored from a long throw-in.
“We then went straight up the park, got a corner, and scored from that, for 1-1.
“It was one-for-one after that until the red card – Matty Gray got sent off.
“The ball has gone over the top of the back four, he’s gone across Matty and he’s in one-on-one, so he had a bit of a decision to make, and took one for the team.
“At the end we ended up needing the fifth goal, because they’ve scored late on.”
Gray says the three points were important, especially after losing 4-0 to Port Glasgow last weekend.
He said: “It was a big win, those ones are always big ones. I said to the boys after the game I love games like that, because we dug in, kept our shape, and kept what we had, even with us losing four goals.
“We’ve managed to play pretty well on a difficult pitch, and score five goals.”
Despite the 8-2 midweek score-line, Gray felt Jags could take a lot from their performance.
He said: “We actually took a lot of positives from the cup game, other than the first five or 10 minutes, when I felt we were going to have a big problem.
“They had scored a couple of goals early, and we looked as if we were contributing nothing to the game, but we all got together, stepped up, and the goals we scored were really good.
“We played through them, so there were actually a few positives, apart from the score-line.”
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