After a more mixed start to the 2023/24 Lowland League campaign for Albion Rovers, manager Sandy Clark has slowly seen things start really coming together for his first team squad in recent weeks, and there is now a quiet, but real and growing optimism, that we could well be in for a decent season with a far stronger end to the second half of the campaign.
This improved optimism stems from results across the last four games which we knew would be a very tricky period indeed, but the team managed to secure a solid ten points in the last fortnight with victories over Broomhill, Linlithgow Rose and Gretna, whilst also taking a draw in the rearranged Broomhill clash and for those who read on TPP that probably would not have expected that kind of return from those games.
This has seen Clark’s side push into the top ten positions in the division, and he has rightly been praising the squad’s performance levels of late – and naturally he now wants them to maintain that and really build some momentum moving forward. Momentum will be key to ending the campaign on a high, as we obviously have games in hand over many of the sides above us, and we can seriously take full advantage of that in the weeks and months that lie ahead, and hopefully, we will just see how high that may
potentially take us.
Following Saturday’s 109 victory over Gretna where Aaron Quigg scored the all important, and telling goal, Clark told club media that it had been a very difficult spell for him and the team, but that the points return had been ‘great’ and had more than set us up nicely for the remaining fixtures of the campaign.
“It took a while, but I’m delighted for young Aaron to get it on his debut. There’s other games like that where we’ve not taken anything this season, so I will happily take the three points because it was merited.“
On the same theme, he continued on to say that although we did not create many chances in the game, and although he felt that the conditions counted against us, whilst it was not a great performance, it was one where the players dug in, stayed solid and ultimately managed to take the one chance that they needed to win the game and take all three points.
With our next clash back on home soil at Cliftonhill, as we welcome Bo’ness United to our ground, Clark remained confident that we would again be in for a positive result given our general home form so far this season, and he knew that the players would again take further confidence from that. The gaffer also took time out in his interview to praise club captain Sean Fagin, as the 23 year old hit his 150 game milestone mark for us in the last match.
Stating simply that his performance was as we have now come to expect from him, ‘assured, determined and a great leader’ he added that ultimately that is why he is the club skipper, he rarely makes mistakes, does things wrong or lets us down and that he was an incredibly talented player who would continue to improve with greater game time, responsibility and maturing experience.
At the end of the day, Clark was simply delighted for him to reach such a major milestone for any player at a club, and he fully expected that the next milestone would quickly come to pass for him. For now, it is simply all eyes to the next game and if we can pick up another victory and all three points, the perception on what our potential season could herald will change again.
