Anvils suffer heavy defeat to leaders

VINNIE Parker expressed his disappointment following a 5-0 defeat away to Lowland League leaders Clydebank.

However, the Gretna 2008 manager admitted losing against the Bankies would not define the season.

And he has put the onus on his players to bounce back as they enter the new year.

Neil McLaughlin slotted home the opener on nine minutes at Holm Park.

Lee Gallacher then scored twice in the first 15 minutes of the second half to make it 3-0.

Gretna’s Sean McKenzie was then shown a second yellow card after contesting a free kick in the air with the home keeper. The referee adjudged the striker to have committed a foul in the air.

The hosts added a fourth on 82 minutes through Nicky Low, before Aaron Black made it five two minutes from time.

Speaking after the match, Parker said: “It was a difficult last 15 minutes especially. They’ve got a lot of quality. They’re a really good team and you can see why they’re top of the league.

“I think we caused a lot of our own problems at times.The first goal has came from our corner, I thought we maybe had a couple of opportunities to stop them before the ball has ended up in our net.

“We were half a yard off it, and I said that at half time.

“We tried to go into the channels in the second half, it didn’t quite work and we never really got much control of the game either.”

Parker added: “I’m disappointed with Sean’s sending off, I didn’t think it was a sending off.

“The linesman in front of us – we could hear him saying ‘it’s an accident, he’s went for the ball’.

“The referee has not had an impact on the scoreline, that’s for sure.

“I think losing Sean when we lost him and going down to ten men against Clydebank was always going to be difficult.

“I thought we were really poor in the last 15 minutes. I wouldn’t say we gave up but we made it easy. “We never stopped balls coming into our box, we never tracked runners and we probably ended up looking a couple of yards off it.”

Gretna welcome Cowdenbeath to Raydale Park this Saturday.

Parker said: “We need to bounce back.

“I thought up until today we’ve been really good. We just need to get back to that level of performance.

“When we played them up there we had a brilliant start to the game, and we kind of fell apart in the last 15-20 minutes.

“We need to be on it for 90 minutes and we need to make sure we bounce back. It’s really important that we do. “There’s still something like 16 games left. We’ve still got a couple of cups to play for.

“The boys are hurting and they’re disappointed. We’re hurting and we’re disappointed. But Clydebank doesn’t define our season.”

The defeat was made even worse for the Anvils after experienced central defender Stuart Douglas picked up a knee injury.

Parker said he would be entering the market in January, with four or five new additions on his wish-list.