Gala Fairydean Rovers: Skipper Danny Galbraith reflects on rollercoaster few days as Rovers start Lowland League with loss and win

Galbraith admits that a pair of “very avoidable” early goals left his side with a huge mountain to climb in Saturday’s league opener at Bo’ness United, which ended in a 3-0 defeat for the Borders outfit.

But then the former Hibernian star was a much happier man on Tuesday night, as he put the icing on the cake in Rovers’ second league outing at home to East Stirlingshire at Netherdale by scoring the clinching second goal on 47 minutes to add to Nicky Reid’s opener on seven minutes.

The joy of that fine 2-0 win over Pat Scullion’s side was in sharp contrast to three days earlier at Newtown Park, as Ryan Porteous’ early double put Bo’ness 2-0 up within 11 minutes, with Scott Dalziel adding a third before half-time to complete Rovers’ misery.

“Saturday was a really disappointing day,” Galbraith told the Southern Reporter. “Not one that I saw coming I must confess.

"But I think the league is such that if you’re going to gift any team a 2-0 lead then you’re going to give yourselves a mountain to climb.

"It was pretty clear from a defensive point of view that we were all over the place for both goals.

"The first one their striker has a free header seven yards out, nobody near him. It hits the crossbar, comes back and he's still got time to put the rebound into the net.

"Defensively it was a pretty poor goal to concede.

"The second goal was a mix-up, before you know it the ball runs through and the same player’s one on one with the goalkeeper with nobody in sight and to be fair to him he tucked it away well.

"The goals were very avoidable which, although not a good thing, is hopefully something that can be rectified pretty easily."

Referring to the third goal, Galbraith added: “We were attacking in their right back position and the linesman gave one of the strangest decisions ever, suggesting the ball was out of play when it was about a yard in play.

"Ten seconds later they take the ball, break on us and the ball is in the back of the net. That was probably the final nail in the coffin when a really strange decision went against us.”

Despite having 70% possession in the second half, Rovers didn't come close to pulling a goal back.

"We huffed and we puffed but we created very little,” Galbraith said.

"Although we had all the ball and tried to play most of the football, from Bo’ness’ perspective they were very well organised and as soon as they had a lead they had something to defend and they defended very well.”

But then came the midweek success over Shire, which saw Reid and Galbraith both convert crosses to hand Gala the points.

Galbraith said: “The manager (Martin Scott) summed it up after the game when he said that, after that good performance, could we understand why he was so frustrated after Saturday’s game?

"We probably never gave a true reflection of ourselves on Saturday.

"Goals change games and when you lose a goal after 70 seconds, as we did at the weekend, it was a really bad start and we probably failed to recover properly.

"Tuesday night was obviously a huge game because of the result on Saturday.

"It was vital to get three points on the board and it was great that we were able to put in a really good performance.”