​Danny Galbraith free-kicks at double help take Gala Fairydean Rovers through to round two of league cup

​Rovers’ 3-0 victory against Rose at their Netherdale Stadium home ground in Galashiels on Saturday followed a 4-2 penalty shootout win against them in last March’s East of Scotland Cup final after ending open play tied at 2-2, sandwiching league defeats home and away to the West Lothian outfit by 6-1 in December and 5-0 in August respectively.

Player-manager Martin Scott’s Borderers booked a second-round place at home to Stirling University or Cowdenbeath later this month with a 14th-minute tap-in by striker Jamie Semple, from a Liam Watt assist, after rounding visiting goalkeeper Lewis McMinn and two free-kicks from distance taken by captain Danny Galbraith, on 33 minutes and 75.

The first of those free-kicks was given for a foul on the winger himself and the second for one on fellow goal-scorer Semple.

Galbraith is delighted to be up for a cup again after helping secure the first silverware won by the club since their formation in their current guise in 2013 just short of a year ago and he was also pleased by the performance his team put in to earn their progress.

“We probably didn’t see that result coming and certainly not in the manner we achieved it, it would be fair to say,” the 33-year-old told us.

“You always go into these games confident that if you do the right things, you can get a result, but I don’t think many people would have predicted that scoreline, if I’m being honest.”

He was also pleased with his free-kicks, though less so with a penalty miss in between, that spot-kick having been awarded for a foul on Ciaran Greene.

“I was definitely delighted with them,” said Galbraith, with Rovers from 2019 to 2021 and since 2022.

“It’d been a long time coming, to be fair, so it’s typical that the day one goes in, another one goes in too.

“After putting a penalty over the crossbar, I felt under pressure to try to make up for that.

“I was very disappointed in myself at that point as that penalty kick was a lot higher than it was supposed to be, so I keep telling myself that if I’d scored the penalty, I probably wouldn’t have got the second free-kick. That’s the way these things go sometimes.”

Saturday’s cup tie also saw striker Watt sent off for a second yellow card late on following a fracas involving several players from both sides and defender Ben Reilly sustain a broken wrist.

Rovers are away to East Stirlingshire this coming Saturday and winger Danny Galbraith is regarding that as an opportunity to try to put a bit of distance between themselves and the team immediately beneath them in the Scottish Lowland Football League.

His team are 15th in the standings at the moment, on 25 points from as many fixtures, with Shire third from bottom, on 22 from 24.

Shire’s goal difference is 18 better than Gala’s, though, meaning that defeat at the Falkirk Stadium would see manager Pat Scullion’s side leapfrog their visitors in the table and that’s something the Borderers are anxious to avoid as they plot a move back in the other direction.

Player-manager Martin Scott’s Rovers won the reverse fixture at Netherdale by 2-0 back in July and they’re hoping to do the double against Shire this weekend, with kick-off at 3pm, to edge back up towards mid-table.

“I’m looking forward to going up there as they’ve got a brand new pitch and, by all accounts, it’s really, really good,” said Galbraith.

“That should suit us, so we’ll certainly have no excuses going up there after a couple of tough away games on grass pitches with perhaps-difficult surfaces.

“We’ve maybe not been as cohesive as we’d like to have been in the way we play in those games, but there’ll be no excuses up there. It’s a good pitch and playing at the Falkirk Stadium is always good for the boys.

“If we’re at it on Saturday, we’ll do well but everybody needs to be at least a seven or an eight out of ten to make that happen.”

He added: “There are a lot of teams bunched in that mid-table-downwards area, so these are the games that decide who takes the higher positions at the end of the season.

“There’s not much in between us all, so a couple of results either way will either see you getting left behind or leapfrogging the teams in front of you.”