Gala Fairydean Rovers looking to return to winning ways in league away to defending champions Linlithgow Rose

The Borderers, left a man short by a 53rd-minute red card shown by referee Tayler Martin to defender Liam Fagan for a last-man foul, were beaten 3-1 hosting Bo’ness United on Saturday, four days on from a 1-0 loss away to Broxburn Athletic in West Lothian, leaving them ninth in their 16-team table, on three points from as many fixtures.

Tylar Denholm gave Fairydean the lead five minutes into their first home fixture of the new term with his first competitive goal for his new club, and they managed to keep hold of that advantage into the second half but not for much longer after Fagan’s sending-off and an accompanying penalty turned the game in their Stuart Hunter-managed visitors’ favour.

Kieran Mitchell placed that spot-kick beyond home No 1 Reece Murray to even things up and added another goal on 76 minutes and Jack Hodge got their third four minutes from full-time to put the match out of reach of their Danny Galbraith-skippered Netherdale Stadium hosts, reversing the defeat by the same scoreline inflicted on Bo’ness in last term’s corresponding fixture in April.

Linlithgow, last season’s nationwide Lowland league champions, are still awaiting their first win of the new campaign after following up a 1-1 opening-day draw at home to Edinburgh’s Civil Service Strollers with a 1-0 defeat away to Tranent in East Lothian at the weekend, leaving them 12th in the table, on one point from two matches, ahead of Fairydean’s visit this Saturday, with kick-off at 3pm.

Manager Martin Scott’s Galashiels club will head up to West Lothian hoping for a repeat of their 2-1 win in last season’s equivalent fixture last July, though they lost both of their meetings in the interim, by 4-0 at home in February in the league and by 2-1 away in the Scottish Cup last September.

Looking back at Saturday’s loss, Scott, 40, said: “I’m very frustrated with our second-half performance.

“I’m very frustrated with our second-half performance.

“I thought we were really efficient in the first half, taking loads of chances, but we just weren’t ruthless enough in the final third.

“We were creating opportunities but in the last moments in and around the box we were snatching at our shots or we weren’t making the right decisions.

“Leading to the penalty decision, we got a man sent off and we had to try to regroup. It was a double punishment because we had a man sent off and they scored from the resulting penalty kick. We self-imploded a wee bit today after a really convincing first 45 minutes, which is disappointing.

“Obviously, the sending-off gave them a lift and they put a wee bit of pressure on us but I actually thought we recovered really well. We shifted our shape and we still looked threatening.

“Overall, I think we can be a wee bit more mature in our performance and show a resilience and mentality to see games out.

“We’ve had a couple of challenging fixtures but we’ve picked up three points from three. It should have been, in my opinion, a minimum of four and potentially five, so there’s a wee bit of work to do.

“We’ll work hard behind the scenes and keep trying to improve on the pitch and see where that takes us.”

Ahead of their trip to Linlithgow this Saturday, Fairydean are due to host East of Scotland Football League division two south-east conference side Edinburgh Community for a second-round East of Scotland Qualifying Cup tonight.

Making up the rest of Fairydean’s starting line-up against Bo’ness were Greg Macpherson, Keaghan Jacobs, Lewis Hall, Che Reilly, Zack Tomany, Ethan Dougal and Jared Lyons, with David Chalmers, Arnault Kasa, James Clare, Jamie Green, Daniel Strickland and Ross Lamb as substitutes.