Paul Hartley was frustrated Cove Rangers missed an opportunity to close the gap on League One leaders Falkirk last night.
The Granite City side drew 1-1 with Clyde at Broadwood at the same time as the Bairns were crashing to defeat at Airdrie, with David Goodwillie pegging Cove back two minutes after Connor Scully’s 75th-minute opener.
As a result, Hartley’s second-placed outfit cut the gap on Falkirk to three points instead of one.
He said: “I thought it was a missed opportunity in general. I thought we controlled the game.
“We scored a really good goal and didn’t concentrate for five minutes after that and conceded a sloppy goal.
“I felt overall we were well on top of the game without a cutting edge or a timely pass.
“We knew it was going to be tough, but every game is going to be tough between now and the end of the season.
“It’s another point for us. There are a lot of tired bodies in there because of the (Scottish Cup) game at Ibrox on Sunday.
“I made six changes and we have players missing through injury, so I had to change the system a bit.
“They made two changes after we went a goal up.
76’ | CFC 0-1 #CRFC
GET IN!! Rory lays it off for Scully who finds the corner from the edge of the area!!#CRFCLive pic.twitter.com/oUOjMNlTij
— Cove Rangers FC (@CoveRangersFC) April 6, 2021
“They brought on a centre half in Tom Lang to play upfront and brought on David Goodwillie to play alongside him.
“But we’ll dust ourselves down and go again. We were well on top, but just didn’t have it in the final third.”
Cove can now look forward to back-to-back home matches against Dumbarton on Saturday, before Falkirk come calling on April 17, for what promises to be a mouth-watering prospect.
Hartley added: “We’ve never said what we are going to do in this league, we’ve just come in as the new boys, and the most important game for me is this Saturday.
“We have had to rotate the squad over the last few games and hopefully we might have two of our injured boys back on Saturday.”
Cove were under the cosh at the start.
Michael McGlinchey split open the defence for Lewis Jamieson to run on and clip the ball over goalkeeper Stuart McKenzie, but the ball drifted wide of the far post. One minute later Clyde defender Craig Howie headed wide.
Cove got their first chance on eight minutes when Blair Yule put Seb Ross racing through, but goalkeeper David Mitchell saved at his feet.
They came close again on 25 minutes when Fraser Fyvie whipped a free-kick just wide.
Cove might also have had a penalty on 36 minutes when Rory McAllister went down in a challenge from Marky Munro.
But they continued to dominate proceedings, finally breaking the deadlock on 75 minutes when Yule and McAllister combined brilliantly to set up Connor Scully at the edge of the area.
The midfielder looked up and curled his shot superbly into the bottom corner of the net.
But the always dangerous Goodwillie, who had only come on as a substitute five minutes earlier, levelled on 77 minutes, pouncing on a rebound to volley home from six yards.