AUCHINLECK Talbot boss Tommy Sloan says he was delighted with how his side bounced back from midweek disappointment.
The Beechwood Park outfit fell to just their second defeat of the Lowland League West season on Wednesday when they hosted Largs Thistle.
A second half William Sewell strike was enough to earn the North Ayrshire club their first win away to Auchinleck in more than 70 years with the 1-0 win ensuring Thistle made it a double over Talbot this season.
Sloan commented: “The Largs game, we’ve not scored – when you don’t score you can’t win. It’s a game we dominated and we’ve only ourselves to blame there.
“When you lose, you are always looking for positives. We dominated the match though we left ourselves open a wee bit when we were chasing it late on.
“How we haven’t scored I don’t know, but we needed to lick our wounds and move onto the next match.”
Sloan got exactly the reaction he was looking for on Saturday as his team travelled to take on Dufftown in the Scottish Junior Cup.
The holders got their defence off to an ideal start with a 7-0 triumph in Moray which kicked off with Ethan Brew opening the scoring inside a minute.
Conor Boyd then notched a hat-trick inside the first 20 minutes as Talbot cruised into the break 4-0 ahead.
After the break, Boyd added a fourth of the afternoon with Brew also adding to his tally before Tarek Abed completed the scoring.
“We had to go up and do the business there and we did it well," Sloan added. "We put the game to bed after 20 minutes, it was really over as a contest.
“I’m delighted with that. We move on now and it’s Kilwinning Rangers, that’ll be a tough game with them up the top though it’s three points for every game.
“We’ve lost a game at home the other day, we lacked that cutting edge, hopefully we have that like we did on Saturday.
“There were plenty of goals at the weekend, that’ll help the confidence, we need to take that into the next match.”
Sloan expects a challenging week in Lowland League West which starts at Buffs Park on Tuesday, September 22, before his side host Cumnock in the first of back-to-back derbies on Saturday, September 29.
He continued: “They’re [the derby] always big matches, they’ll take care of themselves. We’ve got three really tough matches coming up, that’s something we need to get ourselves wound up for.
“But we always need to take the first one and not look too far ahead.
“It’s two games [in one week] again, we’re getting used to that. There seems to be more midweek games in this league, we’re acclimatising to it."
Share