Peterhead co-bosses Ryan Strachan and Jordon Brown were encouraged by their side’s display despite slipping to a 4-1 loss at Falkirk.
Another losing visit to Falkirk Stadium highlighted Peterhead’s dramatic change of circumstances over the past 12 months as they completed a disappointing League Cup campaign on Saturday.
This time last year, Scotland’s longest-serving manager Jim McInally was still in the Balmoor hotseat and the Blue Toon had just started another season in League One.
An August defeat in Falkirk began a sequence of results that eventually ended McInally’s 11-year reign and sent the club plummeting down to League Two.
Following McInally’s departure and David Robertson’s unsuccessful four-month stint, the team is now co-managed by two rookies in their early 30s, Brown and Strachan.
The Blue Toon will be hoping the player-manager model works as well as it did for Airdrieonians and Rhys McCabe last season who won promotion to the Championship.
Saturday’s 4-1 reverse was a third straight loss in the League Cup after drawing with group winners Partick in game one.
Although they finished bottom of Group B with a single point, it is not all doom and gloom ahead of this weekend’s League Two opener away to East Fife.
Peterhead took a shock early lead at Falkirk Stadium after Conor O’Keefe finished off a lightning counter-attack led by fellow striker Kieran Shanks.
Your Blue Toon lineup for today's match v @FalkirkFC
🔵⚪💙 pic.twitter.com/reu19yZEKc— Peterhead FC (@pfcofficial) July 29, 2023
Even after Tom Lang equalised for the home side, the visitors continued to carve out goalscoring opportunities with Strachan being thwarted by on-loan keeper Sam Long before Andy McCarthy and Shanks both fired narrowly wide.
The match statistics confirmed what a closely-contested game it was, and nobody would have complained if it had stayed all-square at half time but Ross MacIver struck two minutes into stoppage time for Falkirk.
Further goals from summer signing Alfred Agyeman and sub Calvin Miller put the Bairns out of sight by the hour mark, although Partick’s late penalty winner at Firhill denied them a place in the last 16 of the competition.
“We scored a good early goal through Conor and played pretty well in the first half,” said Strachan.
“But we couldn’t take our chances at 1-1 and we then lost a second goal at a really bad time instead of going in level.
“It was still all to play for in the second half, but Falkirk killed us off in the first ten minutes and we didn’t have the legs to get back in the game.
“I thought it wasn’t a bad performance overall.”
Brown added: “Falkirk are a really strong team at home and will be challenging for the League One title this season so we shouldn’t be too disappointed to have lost here.
“Getting into contention for a shot at promotion is our main aim this season, and we’re looking forward to getting things started at Bayview on Saturday.”
