Berwick Rangers up to tenth in table after win at Hearts B
Berwick Rangers racked up a winning double against Heart of Midlothian B on Tuesday to move into the Scottish Lowland Football League’s top-ten places.
Manager Kevin Haynes’ Northumbrians followed up a win by 2-0 against the William Hill Championship club’s colts at home at Shielfield Park at the start of September with another by 3-1 at Edinburgh’s Ainslie Park in midweek to lift themselves up from 15th in the table to tenth, now on 16 points from a dozen fixtures.
Liam Buchanan scored twice against Hearts B this week, with two minutes on the clock and 50, adding to his goal against them just over a month prior, and Mike Mbewe got the visitors’ other past home goalkeeper Lyndon Tas, on 46, with Henry Lister netting for their hosts beyond Liam Campbell on the quarter-hour mark.
Haynes was delighted to see his side chalk up their fourth win of this term, matching their tallies of draws and losses, telling the club’s Facebook page afterwards: “Any point on a Tuesday night is a good point.
“Hearts’ players today would probably have been in for a light session, maybe doing a bit at set-pieces, and if they didn’t, they’d have had the day off.
“We’ve got guys who’ve been digging holes and drilling walls, so any point on a Tuesday night is a point worth having irrespective of our performance but I thought our second-half performance was outstanding.”
The 44-year-old now wants to see his side build on that win by improving their league form, saying: “We’ve won four, lost four and drawn four – we need to come away from that. We need to start putting some wins together.
“We’ve not won two games in a row in the league but equally we’ve not lost two games in a row, so that’s the next part – can we get a wee bit of consistency, can we start picking up three wins out of five instead of one on, one off?
“We’ve spoken about that and hopefully that win will be a catalyst now and we can use it as a springboard.”
Tuesday’s match had been proverbial game of two halves, said Haynes, and he was much more impressed by the second 45 minutes than the opening three-quarters of an hour.
“The second half was much better,” he said.
“We’d set out to be aggressive in the first half but I think we scored too early. After we’d scored, we kind of sat off Hearts for a little bit and you’re asking for trouble if you sit off them, but we managed to reset at half-time and we got after them again more aggressively, pressing higher up the pitch, and it was night and day.
“We had more control, and I didn’t think we’d had any control in the first half.
“With that more aggressive press, we won lots more turnovers and we controlled the game a lot more.
“In the second half, I thought we were dominant from the 46th minute right the way through to the final whistle.”
Next up for Rangers is a trip to Coatbridge this coming Saturday to take on 15th-placed Albion Rovers, with kick-off against the North Lanarkshire outfit, beaten 3-0 at home by Bonnyrigg Rose on Tuesday, at 3pm.
They’ll head north looking to extend a three-match unbeaten run against their former Scottish League Two rivals, having drawn 0-0 with them last time they met, in April, after beating them at home by 2-0 last November and 2-1 seven months previously.