Managers Post Raith

29/08/09: JM - "It would have been easy to 4-4-1 and just be solid but I am not interested in that I am interested in trying to win the game and getting back in the game.

 Jim McIntyre watched the recording of Willie Gibson's sending off for violent conduct before commenting to the press:-

"There was absolutely no contact, he has got up and brushed the boy off him. The referee viewed it as nothing but the linesman has chosen to get involved and said that he caught him flush on. I have just watched it, there was no contact. He was just trying to shrug him off, it was very very hard. It was a major point in the game."

The Manager gave credit to his players because at half time he had given them the option:-

"Either you accept this or you can go and have a go. They certainly did that and Graham Bayne's header was a good bit over the line. The linesman was not up with play so there were two big mistakes in the game. That would have given my players a big lift.

"They have gone up the other end and scored. It was a great counterattack for them from their point of view; we have got to defend it better but when you have only ten men and you are asking them to have a real go you accept that you are going to get done on the counter.

"It would have been easy to 4-4-1 and just be solid but I am not interested in that I am interested in trying to win the game and getting back in the game. Credit to them, I thought for half an hour we did that and then with the opportunities that presented themselves we never took any. We got robbed of one but there was one cleared off the line and another that was close. You really need one of them to go in to give the players that bit extra energy." 

Raith Rovers Manager, John McGlynn was much happier than he had been on Wednesday night:-

"Our keeper made an amazing save from the header at the corner kick and we broke right up the park and a great ball in from Darren (Smith) was stuck in the goal by Damien. After that we were still under pressure and it was a situation where we were just soaking up the pressure towards the end.

"Dunfermline didn't really create an awful lot at the end but for a good part of the second half we were under a lot of pressure. A lot of credit goes to Dunfermline because even with ten men they took the game to us and pushed us back. When you do that you are sometimes open to the counterattack and that is how we got the second goal.

"Great character was shown by my players. We came here as big underdogs after the result the other night here, we dug in and dug out a result. It is the result that is the main thing for us today.

"We know that we have a long way to go - 32 games - we will enjoy what we have just now but we will not get carried away because there is a long way to go. The league is so tight that you will have highs and you will have lows, we just have to make sure that we have more highs than lows."

The Rovers manager took the experience of the Co-operative Insurance cup tie into this league game:-

"We had to look at how the game went on Wednesday night and how they could get the ball so easily to their strikers. We had to do something about that by outing Grant (Murray) in there and he did the job remarkably well. That stifled the threat from Dunfermline. I am really pleased after working on it that Grant carried it out very well."

McGlynn said that we would never know how big an impact the sending off of Willie Gibson at the end of the first half would have had on the result.

"I have seen games won by ten men, we won last year against Alloa with ten men it can happen."