Updated: Two losses in four days leave Hawick Royal Albert’s hopes of survival in East of Scotland Football League second division hanging by thread

Manager Kenny Aitchison had the weekend’s match down as a must-win for his second-bottom team, currently on 11 points from 28 fixtures, so they’re now facing even more of an uphill struggle than previously after allowing Ormiston, third from bottom at the time, to extend the gap between them to five points, and the East Lothian side have since stretched it further, to eight points, and moved up a place after beating Thornton Hibs 2-1 away yesterday.

Albert now have only four games left to salvage their season and they go into them nine points from safety with 12 left to play for.

Next up is a trip to Fife to take on bottom-of the-table Lochgelly Albert this coming Saturday, with kick-off at 2.30pm.

The other Albert are one point worse off than the Borderers after 28 fixtures.

Looking back over Saturday’s loss, Aitchison told the Royalists’ Facebook page: “It was just a nightmare scoreline.

“We were hoping to get a result to get us back to fighting to stay in the division, so 3-0 was as bad as it could get, I suppose.

“It summed up our season really. At 1-0 down, we missed a penalty and we put the cherry on top of the cake with a red card at the end.

“For me, it was very much an experienced team against a team still learning and that was evident in the way they controlled the game defensively.

“They made it very hard for us to create chances and despite some positives, we didn’t do enough to get anything from the game.”

Whitburn’s scorers at Albert Park last night, confirming their promotion to the first division, were Ross Crawford on 16 minutes and Daz Liddell on 45.