Kirkwood: 'Draw feels like two points dropped'
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DETERMINED to draw on the positives from the six-goal thriller at Victoria Park, manager Davie Kirkwood said that Academy’s performance against Buckie Thistle shows how far the club has come since the start of the season.
He said that he can’t pretend he isn’t disappointed not to take more from the game after having a two-goal advantage so early in the match, but insists there aren’t many teams who could have rescued a point after going behind against a team of Buckie’s calibre.
“I suppose you would have to look at it as two points dropped rather than one point gained given the early lead,” he said. “I asked the boys to attack from the kick-off and that’s exactly what they did; we could have possibly been three up after 10 minutes with the Davie Allan penalty incident.
“Had we scored that, the game would have been finished as a contest, but it wasn’t awarded, though the players thought it should have been.
“The team were maybe guilty of letting the incident stay too long in their heads causing them to lose focus, which allowed Buckie back in the game and eventually take the lead. But in the past where they would have hung their heads after going behind, they kept fighting to the final whistle and Michael Steven scored a fantastic goal. I thought that we were worth at least a point on Saturday, and now we need to carry that on into the next few games.”
Buckie Thistle manager Gregg Carrol is raging that his team let go of its 3-2 lead in the dying minutes of the game. But he refuses to accept that his side is now out of the title race, despite being 10 points behind leaders Forres Mechanics and having played two games more.
“Just look at Deveronvale who had a bad start to the league last year and could have won the title on the final day,” he said. “Other people have different things on their minds and different agendas, I haven’t.
“You go and win the league because you deserve to win it, we have dropped two points and that is the way it is.”
He continued: “We dominated after we went two down and I was delighted to retake the lead and we didn’t look like letting it go. We have been losing goals this season because our shape’s wrong when we are defending, and that is what happened against Wick.
“We had the chance to score four or five without any reply at the other end and it feels like a defeat to be simply honest.”
