Cowdenbeath 1-0 Stirling Albion: Beath edge victory

BATTLING Cowdenbeath edged a dire contest to mathematically keep alive their hopes of maintaining their First Division status. In reality though, the Central Park team need to win by a 22-goal margin in Dingwall next week to avoid the lottery of the play-offs.

Despite Albion having little to play for it was they who controlled the opening half with relative ease, and would have gone in with a deserved interval lead had Ludovic Roy not made a majestic save from a Scott Buist header, before getting his body behind a controlled Paul McHale volley.

The flatness and utter lack of any sort of energy or urgency displayed by the home team was hard to fathom given their predicament, and if manager Jimmy Nicholl tore a strip off them at the break it failed to have the desired effect as they reappeared every bit as listless as before.

Stirling continued to have the better of the midfield battle, but for all their possession they rarely threatened to make the breakthrough as time and time again it all went wrong in the final third.

Cowdenbeath's one nugget of hope was recently-recruited former Scotland striker Stevie Crawford, who throughout the encounter mastered the fiery pitch better than most and showed a speed of thought lost on those around him.

And it was Crawford who broke the deadlock with a close-range finish from a low Lee Makel centre to give the Fifers a scarcely deserved victory, and leave Albion still looking for their first win in more than six months.