Vale of Leithen still waiting for second win of season but hoping they’re about to turn corner at last

The Innerleithen team are bottom of the East of Scotland Football League’s premier division without any points from 20 games and on course for back-to-back relegations following their Scottish Lowland Football League exit last summer.

Craigie was encouraged by the display the Borderers put on in East Lothian at the weekend with Ross McLaren in charge, however, and believes it bodes well for the rest of the campaign, starting with a trip to West Lothian’s Broxburn Athletic this coming Saturday, with kick-off at 2.30pm.

Broxburn, ninth in the table on 25 points from 20 fixtures after losing 4-1 at home to Tynecastle at the weekend, won the reverse fixture at Victoria Park at the start of the season in July by 5-2 but Craigie is hoping the Borderers can stop them claiming a winning double against them.

Previous signs of promise for Vale this season – such as their only win, by 2-0 at home to Hill of Beath Hawthorn in September under former manager Michael Wilson, though the three points that victory yielded have since been deducted for a breach of selection rules in November, and a couple of closer games under his successor, Joe Murray – came to nothing, but Craigie is keeping his fingers crossed that an upturn in their fortunes is on the way.

“We played well on Saturday,” he said. “Our performance was quite good.

“We were competing well, especially in the first half. In the second half, they had us under a wee bit of pressure.

“It was promising. Before we lost 10-2 to Musselburgh Athletic at the start of the month, we were defending well, and we were defending well on Saturday again.

“If Saturday was a starting point for us, it was a good starting point.

“This Saturday coming we’ll find out if we’ve turned a wee bit of a corner again as we’ve done that before a few times then been hit by a bad result.

“Broxburn didn’t have a great result at the weekend so we’ve just got to be hopeful that we can compete and give them a game.”

Both Haddington’s goals on Saturday were scored by Guy McGarry, on 58 minutes and 83, helping his side to do the double against their visitors following a 3-1 victory in the reverse fixture in the Borders at the start of September.

Vale’s starting line-up at the weekend was boosted by midfielder Darrell Love following his arrival last week on loan from League 2’s Stirling Albion and they’re expecting further signings to follow.

“We’ve had players on loan from Stirling Albion before and they asked us if we’d be interested in taking him, and he did well on his debut on Saturday,” said Craigie.

“The main thing now is sorting the team out and looking for some new players to add to our squad.

“We’ve got to do things differently to what we’ve been doing. We need to get some experience in the team.”

The club’s current recruitment drive follows the departures of Thomas Penker and Craig Brand.