Warriors reward hardy duo for their devotion

Grant Hamilton was singled out for praise by Brown Ferguson.

Just two hardy Stenny souls made the long Boxing Day trip north to cheer on their favourites. But their devotion was rewarded with a performance, and result, which delighted boss Brown Ferguson.

The Warriors particularly pleased with the way his side dealt with the blustery conditions and loss of key players before kick-off.

He said: “The players showed a real maturity in very, very tough conditions, in terms of keeping the game as simple as they could do and defending situations properly.

“Because of that we managed to give ourselves a platform to go on and get the goals.

“As well as that we had some late call-offs due to injury and illness.

“I had young Grant Hamilton playing at centre-half, 18 years of age and he was up against Rory McAllister. He was playing in really tough conditions up against arguably the best striker in the division and he kept him quiet, so massive credit to him.

“There weren’t many travelling supporters. There were actually only two so it was good to get a result for them as well.

“To get us off the foot of the table is a massive thing for the players in terms of a leap of confidence.”

Four of Stenny’s five wins this season have come away form home, but Ferguson admits he’s at a loss as to why that should be,

He said: “They’ve all been different conditions, they’ve been different types of wins so I can’t really put my finger on it at all. Obviously when you’re away from home there’s maybe not the onus on you to get forward earlier and the onus is on the other team to try and be a bit more expansive.”

Next up for Stenhousemuir is their final match of the season, at home to Alloa Athletic on Hogmanay.

Ferguson said: “We’ve played them twice this season and in both of the games you could see they have players who can hurt you. But we’re on an upward curve at the moment. We’re off the bottom of the table, albeit it’s incredibly tight, and we’ve dragged a lot of teams into the mix.

“If we beat Alloa we’d only be six points behind them, that’s just how crazy it is.”