Berwick Rangers: Injury woes leave Malcolm's men 'down to the bare bones'

Last Saturday’s 1-0 Scottish Lowland Football League defeat at Bo’ness United – which Malcolm’s men lost 1-0 to a 54th-minute Tom Grant penalty after Berwick keeper Calum Antell’s foul on Nick Locke – saw the visitors with only two outfield substitutes to pick from due to the number of unfit players.

And the Berwick crocks brigade was further increased at the weekend when Jamie Pyper went off after just 15 minutes with a hamstring injury, joining Alex Harris (hamstring), Jamie Stevenson (hamstring), Lewis Allan (flu) and Sean Stewart (flu) on the sidelines.

Malcolm, who had no complaints with the Bo’ness penalty award and was happy with the performance as he thought his team passed the ball better than their hosts, told the Berwickshire News: "Jamie is expected to be out for two or three weeks now after going off.

"It meant that David Ferguson (who had been out injured with a facial injury for 14 weeks) had to come on.

"We had maybe been trying to get Fergie 25 minutes or half an hour in an area that he probably wasn’t going to have to header the ball too many times, just to try and get him bedded back in and get some confidence.

"But he had to go and play left centre half after Jamie pulled his hamstring. Fergie was excellent, looked like he’d never been away.

“I thought we made better chances and probably should score.

"We looked like the team that was probably going to win the game, however our away record isn’t particularly great and the way the game was kind of panning out we probably would have settled for a draw.

"We certainly didn’t deserve to lose the game but we made one mistake and that’s what’s cost us.

"Leading up to the penalty, we could have done better before the ball was hooked into the area behind the back four into the box.

"We lost possession right on the halfway line and it quickly transitioned into their attack.

"The goalkeeper comes out to try and tidy it up and the striker gets there before him, knocks it past him and is fouled.

"But we had three or four chances in the first-half and we probably should have scored one of them.

“Then we should possibly have scored one or two in the second-half.

"I can’t fault the players, their attitude, work-rate and effort. They looked a little bit mentally fatigued for probably the last 20 minutes of the game, because the same team had to go Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday.

"In terms of attacking areas on Saturday, we had nothing on the bench to change the personnel.”

Berwick, 11th with 33 points from 23 games, continue their Lowland League campaign at home to 13th-placed Hearts B this Saturday with kick-off at 3pm.

Hearts’ second string won 6-0 against Berwick in the corresponding fixture at their place on the opening day of the season back on July 23, when Pyper was sent off after 52 minutes.

When asked if he was surprised the Hearts kids were so far down the league, Malcolm said: “It’s a difficult league. The young ones come into it and they probably think it’s going to go a different way.

"However they are an elite youth system so they will have good players and it’s probably more the physical nature of the league that’s a wee bit more difficult for Hearts just now.

"In terms of technical ability you will find they are above a lot of the league, but in terms of the physical side that is probably the bit they will be working hard on.”