Edinburgh may well have been jam-packed with sporting thrills on Saturday … but Stirling Albion boss Alan Maybury wished his side had made things a little more boring after being edged out in a seven-goal cracker.
The Binos and hosts Edinburgh City were competing with the bright lights of Murrayfield, nearby Easter Road and even Musselburgh Races on a busy day in the capital, but kept up their end of the bargain as they landed blows back and forth.
But it was the Citizens who came out on top 4-3, with Innes Lawson’s brace proving a difference in a damaging defeat for Stirling’s hopes of a promotion play-off spot.
In a match which saw the sides go back and forth all afternoon, James Graham’s quickfire double straight after the break looked to have recovered things for Stirling, but Ouzy See’s leveller was followed by Lawson’s late winner to sicken Binos hearts.
It was a disappointing come-down after just a fourth league clean sheet for the leaky Stirling defence in the win over Bonnyrigg – and Maybury admitted his side’s “gung-ho” approach ended up proving costly.
He said: “It’s just frustrating that we score three really good goals and whatever reason, we just lose control of the game.
“We had the ball for the third and fourth goals in the middle of the pitch and we just get countered on, so we need to be better in that and in the goals we concede.
“The game was a bit cagey at the start, they had a lot of possession without really hurting us too much and we grew into things at the end of the half and played a bit higher.
“We asked for more again at half-time and we got that at the start of the half and then in that last quarter, we just went gung-ho when we didn’t need to be, we lost structure and it cost us.
“We were probably a bit naive – we don’t need to score another one there at 3-2 but I don’t know if we thought we should’ve been 4-2, 5-2 and that’s what we were trying to do rather than killing the game a little bit.
“The group were maybe a little excitable and not necessarily in a bad way, we don’t want to become negative; it’s a fine balance, we had the ball and a couple of bad decisions were punished.”
The Binos had the chance to atone for those defensive blunders with the visit of Spartans to Forthbank last night (Tuesday), with the visitors also in hunt for that coveted fourth place spot.
Ahead of that game, Maybury added: “We’ll stick with what we’ve been doing, I thought we performed well at Peterhead but lost by the odd goal, we were good last week and we were good in stages today and lose out by a goal again.
“The players we’ve brought in suit what we want to do and will add to the group we have here and between now and the end of the season, we’ll need all of them.
“There were large parts which went right in the game [against Edinburgh], but you obviously can’t give away four goals and hope to win a game.”