Odd

Having had to make do with Blackberry updates last weekend, I witnessed my first victory since the opening day of the season on Saturday and despite the fact that the performance wasn’t necessarily a classic, there are clear signs that the team is moving in the right direction under John Coughlin. In previous home matches, once the opposition drew level that would have been the indication for the floodgates to be opened. But we now seem to have a degree of solidity about us. When we went 2-1 up I couldn’t see Dumbarton getting back in to it, and in the end we held on comfortably. The players now seem confident enough to take the ball and pass it. For (short) periods of the game on Saturday we actually passed the ball about well and maintained possession for longer than it takes you to blink your eyes. A dramatic improvement. The team are still a million miles away from being what you would probably call “good”, but in this league you don’t actually have to be brilliant. The general standard is poor. It would seem that East Fife are head and shoulders above the competition, with everyone else being much of a muchness. I think the encouraging signs for us must be that we do have some decent players in the squad and if Coughlin can get them playing to anything like their potential (Ross Hamilton has been excellent since he got back into the starting line up) then we should be able to challenge for a play off space; comfortably. Big challenge though coming up when we play the top 3 in the space of the next 3 weeks so it will be interesting to see how far we have come.