Ayr United 2
Raith Rovers 1
League (Championship)

Match Report

English midfielder Ben Dempsey put manager Scott Brown’s hosts ahead with a goal past visiting goalkeeper Josh Rae on 28 minutes and former East Fife forward Anton Dowds doubled their advantage just ahead of the hour mark in front of a crowd of 2,062 at Somerset Park.

Second-half substitute Lewis Vaughan got one back for gaffer Dougie Imrie’s visitors on 77 minutes but an equaliser wasn’t forthcoming after that as Ayr followed up a 2-0 win against Rovers at Kirkcaldy’s Stark’s Park in October with a further three-point haul.


Vaughan’s goal was one of six shots on target for Rovers, twice as many as Ayr managed, but home goalkeeper Max Thompson pulled off five saves to Rae’s one to ensure victory for his team, shown seven yellow cards by referee Ross Hardie to one for the visitors, for captain Scott Brown a minute ahead of the final whistle.

That result stretches the gap between sixth-placed Raith and fourth-placed Ayr in football’s William Hill Championship from one point to four, the Fifers being on 28 points from 24 fixtures and their South Ayrshire hosts on 32 from 23.

Rovers have got this coming weekend off and will return to action away to seventh-placed Greenock Morton on Saturday, February 14, with kick-off at 3pm.

Imrie was disappointed to see his side suffer their tenth league defeat of the season, a list of losses outdone only by basement side Ross County and third-from-bottom Airdrieonians, both on 11, telling Raith TV: “Certainly in the first half, I didn’t think there was much in the game. I just thought it was a proper championship game apart from the goal we conceded.

“I thought it was a good, honest championship game in the first half, but their second goal was unacceptable. We’ve got to get to the ball but we don’t and we allow Anton Dowds six yards to get a shot away on his left foot into the far corner. It’s just not good enough.

“Their two goals were avoidable. We’ve got to be better than that.”

“That’s been our Achilles heel for the last few games – giving ourselves an uphill task. That’s the third game out of three or four that we’ve allowed teams to get a head-start in and you can’t do that in this division. That’s what’s killing us at the moment.

“If you want to get anything out of this league, you’ve got to work for 90 minutes. You can’t just go through the motions.

“You’ve got to give credit to Ayr. For 60 to 65 minutes, they were the better team and then we came alive, but it’s easy to come alive at 2-0 when the game’s done.”

Imrie, 42, is insistent that his club can take some positives from their latest defeat, however, saying: “It’s another loss but we’ve got to try and take something out of it and for the last 15 or 20 minutes, I thought we were excellent. We just couldn’t get a second goal.

“It was great to see wee Vaughany back on the scoresheet. That’ll give him a lot of confidence. He probably could have got a hat-trick.

“In the second half, we certainly had enough chances to at least get a point out of the game.”

Match report written by Fife Today