Ewen 'pig sick' as Allan treble leaves Maroons empty-handed at Wick
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Keith manager Craig Ewen described himself as “pig sick” after his team surrendered a 2-1 lead to lose out 3-2 at Wick Academy at Harmsworth Park.
The Maroons recovered from the loss of an early goal to seize the advantage with goals from Michael Selfridge and James Brownie in the space of seven minutes in the second half.
But the home side recovered to take all three points thanks to Davie Allan's treble. They have now won seven of their last eight games in the Highland League.
Keith had 10 of their squad missing and gave two trialists a place in the starting line-up, while Wick had half a dozen first-team regulars unavailable.
“In the first half we didn't play well,” Ewen said. “Wick were certainly the better team. Maybe on the balance of play Wick deserved to be two up rather than one, so we were quite happy to be going in 1-0 down at the break.
“You can blame anything you like, but we hadn't got started. Man for man Wick were better and moved the ball better.
“But in the second half we came out really well. We got Wick on the back foot, we were creating chances. We had two headers from the middle of the six-yard box that we missed, and even with the last kick to try and get a draw we somehow hit the guy on the line from two yards out.”
Ewen was unhappy with some of the officiating by referee Harry Bruce.
“I am quite a fan of Harry as a referee but I didn't think he and his officials helped me today in terms of some of the decisions in the second half,” he said. “In the lead-up to their third goal I felt there was a clear foul maybe 35 yards out.
"I spoke to him after it and the ref didn't feel it was a foul.
“I felt we had Wick at arm's length in the second half and were in a position to win the game but unfortunately it's similar to our last game [away to Inverurie] – we were in a winning position and haven't been able to see it out or even get a draw. I'm really disappointed to lose.
“The pitch was tricky for both teams but at least it was a fine day to get the game on.
“If it had ended up a 2-2 draw I would have felt that was a decent result for us. Wick is traditionally a tough venue to come to.
“I looked at the statistics and I saw that Keith hadn't won here in 10 years. I said to the boys that I thought we were good enough to maybe put that right.
“I thought we had a chance but we just need to make better decisions, and at the moment in the last 15 to 20 minutes of games our decision-making isn't good enough.”
