Albion Rovers boss Sandy Clark insists his side are ‘very unfortunate’ to be out of the Lowland Cup after crashing at the first hurdle on Saturday.
The Cliftonhill side were playing their maiden game of 2025 after a host of postponements and made their first outing for six weeks when Bo’ness United came calling.
But a Kieran Mitchell effort for the visitors, heading home from a corner after just three minutes, proved the difference in a 1-0 defeat.
Towards the end of the first half, Peter Mendy was denied an equaliser after a brilliant double save to keep Bo’ness in front in the tie, while Billy Mortimer went close in the final stages with an acrobatic effort which went over the crossbar.
Clark felt his side had plenty of the game and said: “I’m really disappointed to lose the game. With the performance, we should have got a result.
“We were the better team for so much of the match. We created more chances, had more corners, all that kind of stuff, but we lost an early goal from a corner after a huge mistake from our point of view.
“We were left chasing the game after that and couldn’t get back into it. The fitness levels for not having played for six weeks were really good. I have no complaints about the effort from the boys. We just didn’t get the breaks.
“It is easy to say we were the better team but we didn’t put the ball in the net and Bo’ness did.
“We are very unfortunate to be out of the cup, that’s for sure. Their goalkeeper had a lot of good saves. He was man of the match, he did really well for them and coped well under a lot of pressure. He got very lucky to get away with picking up a passback. Everybody in the stadium thought it was a pass back but the referee felt it wasn’t.”
On the early exit, he added: “There’s only four games in this cup and there isn’t a great financial reward so it is not a lot of harm done.
“You always want to do your best and win a tournament when you are in it, but we just need to bite the bullet and get on with the rest of the season.”
Attention returns to league business this weekend with Rovers now out of every cup competition being played this season.
Rovers make the trip to Stirling University on Sunday looking to return to winning ways after losing to leaders East Kilbride on their last outing on December 28.
Clark’s side sit seventh in the Lowland League and six points adrift of sixth-place Broxburn, as they look to finish the campaign as high up the table as possible.
He added: “We had a good result against Stirling Uni at home earlier in the season [5-0] but they are always of a good standard so for us to get the points we will need to work hard.”
“We want to try and win every game. We were short of players on Saturday and that is just the way it is at the moment.
“We are capable of getting results against everyone in the league. East Kilbride are the best team in the league by some distance, in my opinion, but every game is winnable and we’ll be trying to get as many points as we can between now and the end of the season.”