It was a tough slog for returning Stirling Albion midfielder Jack Leitch on Saturday – but he admits he feels lucky to be back playing so soon.
The creative midfielder has been out for five weeks after injuring his ankle and being stretchered off in the 6-0 win over Dumbarton, but made his return to the starting line-up in last weekend’s game with Annan.
The ex-Airdrie and Peterhead man came into the side to partner Dale Carrick in the forward areas after Carrick’s regular strike partner Robert Thomson was sent off at Albion Rovers and the partnership appeared to be working well before Cammy Clark’s red card derailed those plans.
But Leitch insisted he was just happy to be back on the pitch after fearing the worst in the immediate aftermath of the injury – and straight into the teeth of a hard-fought encounter with the Galabankies.
He said: “I was quite lucky, it was better than I thought it would be because I thought I had broken it but it was just one of the ligaments.
“I trained twice this week and straight into that, playing with a man down!
“It was working quite well playing off Dale until the red card and then I moved back to the right-hand side and we went to the two banks of four.
“I thought with ten men, we didn’t really have any problems, they put a lot of crosses into the box but our back four dealt with them quite well.
“We looked quite dangerous on the counter with Kai and I had a great chance on the counter with my right foot.
“ I think I caught it well but it’s just went past the post.”
The Annan defeat represented the first blip in an otherwise excellent run which had propelled the Binos right into the League Two title race – but Leitch insists the squad has too much experience to let things be derailed by a couple of up-and-down showings against Rovers and Annan.
Leitch added: “It’s just unfortunate, Blair has been brilliant all year and 99 times out of 100, he catches the shot so there’s not much we can do about that.
“It’s our first defeat in nine and if a draw at Albion Rovers and a defeat here is our blip then we’ll take that.
“We’ve got a lot of good players in there, a lot of experience and players that have been here a while, players that have won this league before so we still have a long way to go this season.”
