​Ex-strikers Daryl Healy and Luke Mahady return to haunt Gala Fairydean Rovers with three goals in cup and league defeats

Kicking off at 3pm, that’ll be their fifth game at Galashiels’ Netherdale Stadium on the bounce but home comforts were in short supply for the last two of those, a 2-1 Scottish Lowland Football League loss on Saturday and a 3-2 East of Scotland Qualifying Cup fifth-round knockout on Tuesday, as former players returned to haunt their old club.

Ex-Fairydean and Selkirk centre-forward Daryl Healy, at Netherdale for the 2021/22 season, scored Cowdenbeath’s goals at the weekend, on 15 minutes and 42, and ex-Cowdenbeath forward Luke Mahady, loaned out to the Borderers by Scottish Championship title challengers Raith Rovers last year, netted twice for Dalgety Bay’s Swifts on Tuesday, on 29 and 50, after Dylan Vannett had opened the scoring with six minutes on the clock.

Home striker Liam Watt was on target against both sets of Fifers, on 71 minutes versus the Blue Brazil and, following a 19th-minute Lwendo Kazoka opener against East of Scotland Football League premier division side Swifts, just ahead of the final whistle in midweek.

Winger Danny Galbraith is hoping he too can get one over an old club, like Healy and Mahady, at the weekend, having been at Bo’ness for the 2021/22 season, but he’s all too aware that Rovers – currently 16th in the table on 28 points from as many fixtures, 12 places and 23 points worse off than their visitors – will have to raise their game for that to happen.

Looking ahead to trying to make amends for a 3-0 defeat in August’s reverse fixture in Bo’ness, Galbraith told us: “One thing I would say is that typically against the league’s better teams, we do seem to put in better performances.

“Why that is I don’t know but these games seem to take care of themselves.

“It must be a real mindset issue because we don’t seem to have problems in getting ourselves up for those types of games, like we had on Tuesday, though that really shouldn’t happen.

“We’re going to have to be up for it because if we’re not, we know what will happen.”

The 33-year-old was sad to see his side surrender one of two chances of silverware they had ahead of kick-off on Tuesday, the other being the Scottish Lowland Football League Cup, saying: “It was hugely disappointing, to be honest.

“It was a great opportunity to get to a cup semi-final, so to perform the way we did and leave ourselves needing four goals at home to win wasn’t good enough.

“Collectively, I don’t think we played the game as if it were a quarter-final we needed to win, with so much at stake.

“Swifts, fair play to them, worked harder than us and took their goals well, but from our point of view, it’s completely unacceptable to perform in the manner that we did.

“It was similar to Saturday in that we never really got going the way we should have.

“It was really disappointing to let an opportunity like that pass us by.

“It was one of those games we probably shouldn’t have needed motivating for – it was a cup quarter-final and everybody knows the prize on offer at the end and what’s at stake.”