Threave Rovers took advantage of title rivals St Cuthbert Wanderers being out of action to close the gap at the top of the South of Scotland League to a point.
The Castle Douglas side ran out 5-0 winners at bottom club Wigtown & Bladnoch in their first game of the year – but it could have been more.
Scott Milligan missed an early penalty after Stuart Douglas was fouled before Douglas headed the visitors in front 10 minutes before the break.
Aiden Kerr fired home the second after the break before Alex Henderson got the third.
Milligan made amends for his earlier miss when he got the fourth 10 minutes from time before Dan Carmichael rounded off the scoring.
Threave coach, Kevin Somerville, said: “We missed a few chances early on, including a penalty, and that probably gave Wigtown a bit of a lift.
“In the final third we did look as if we hadn’t played for four or five weeks, we didn’t look sharp and that cutting edge wasn’t quite there.
“The rest of our play was good, we were quite happy with the way we were building up and controlling the game. It got to 35 minutes and you wondered if it was going to be one of those days.
“It needs a big player for a big moment and fortunately Stuart Douglas managed to get on the end of a cross with an excellent header to give us a goal before half-time.
“The second half was about being patient, they did a lot of running without the ball in the first half so we knew they would wear out and that was how it panned out.”
A combination of the festive period and postponements meant it was Threave’s first game for more than a month and Somerville felt that was noticeable.
He said: “We probably had 13 or 14 really good chances during the game but we just lacked that cutting edge down to that four or five weeks without a game.
“If Covid wasn’t an issue you’d have played a bounce game against a Gretna or Dalbeattie in that period just to keep everyone ticking over but that option wasn’t there with Covid spiking again.
“Generally it was a good performance. It would have been good to have scored another three or four but we just lacked that sharpness. In fairness to Wigtown they nearly capitalised on some mistakes we made so it could have been a different game if they had taken one.
“We knew the importance of keeping a clean sheet as in games where Wigtown have got a goal, they’ve actually run a few teams close. We knew not giving them hope by them not getting a goal was important.”
Threave are back at Meadow Park this weekend when they welcome Upper Annandale in the South of Scotland Challenge Cup.
“We know it’s going to be tough so this week will be about working on that final third.”
