Peterhead’s Scott Brown thinks they need to win two of their next three League One games to be able to say they’ve had a “not bad” start to the campaign.
Having secured their first home win of the season, a 1-0 victory against Dumbarton, two weekends ago, the Blue Toon slumped 1-0 to strugglers Forfar at Balmoor on Saturday, with boss Jim McInally bemoaning their lack of intensity before the visitors netted on the stroke of half-time.
Skipper Brown knows the players need to shake their inconsistency, saying: “It’s going to be a long season if we keep playing well and then don’t play well the next week.
“It’s something we were guilty of last season as well – we’d get a good win and then not really follow it up with a good run.
“It’s how teams like East Fife and Montrose, who were challenging for the play-offs last year, do it – they go and win two, three, four games in a row. It’s something we need to pick up on if we’re going to do well in this league.
“We’ve got two hard games coming up now in Falkirk and Partick (both away) in the next three games, as well as East Fife.
“We need to go and win at least two of the games to say we’ve had a not bad start to the season.”
Asked whether he could pinpoint why Peterhead, who – despite moments of untidiness had plenty of chances in the first half – didn’t manage to get themselves in front against the Loons before Bobby Barr’s sucker-punch header, Brown said: “It was probably a wee bit of complacency.
“You think ‘we’ve beat Dumbarton and we’ll just turn up today and beat Forfar who are bottom of the league’.
“But we know this league’s not like that. Every game’s a challenge – we proved that against teams like Raith last year and obviously against Dundee United at the start of the season (in the Betfred Cup groups) that no game’s a given.
“You need to work hard and harder than the other team before you break through them.”
Peterhead’s Brown, who skied a late volley from 16 yards, knows the chances were there for his team, but says they’d given themselves a mountain to climb by conceding when they did against a team without a League One victory until Saturday.
He added: “The chances were there – but you need to take them.
“I’m probably guilty of that. I missed two or three chances.
“But we lose a silly goal and you can’t give teams at the bottom of the league something to hang on to and defend.
“It makes it hard and you spend the whole second half trying to break them down, but you don’t because they’ve got so many men behind the ball.”
