Annan's Alba adventure comes to an end

Colin McMenamin, Brian Kerr and Rab Douglas were looking on, while they had Darren Young, Gary Harkins and Leigh Griffiths at their disposal on the bench.

Still, I'm sure they were thinking exactly the same looking across at our dugout, with me sitting there!

It's fair to say there were a few tired legs at our reserve game on Tuesday night and I've never seen as much ice on the go as the physios did their best looking after all the lads' aches and pains at Dens Park.

We kept the score down to 3-0 and that was a credit to the defensive job we did as a team.

Dundee enjoyed the bulk of possession and the number of shots they had on goal was incredible. But most of them were from distance and, apart from the goals, there weren't too many clear cut chances offered to our opponents.

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed my 45 minutes after coming on for Mike Jack at half time.

While I was watching the first half I felt that we were giving possession away too easily and were maybe panicking on the ball. Towards the end of the first half we began to improve and we were certainly better in the second half and even managed to create a couple of half chances.

Now that the cup run is over we must focus on the league for the next couple of weeks.

Before we face Cove Rangers in the Scottish Cup we have three games in seven days, with two of these coming at Galabank.

I have no doubt that each of these fixtures will prove difficult but it is very important to our season that we aim to pick up at least six points from the nine that are up for grabs. We want to be at the top end of the table and to do that we have to start picking up points as there is already a little gap developing.

We are getting things right at one end of the park after three league clean sheets on the bounce but we need to start scoring at the other end to start turning these draws into victories.

As it stands, we are the second lowest scorers in the league with one more goal than our next opponents, Montrose... I'm sure a goal feast lies ahead at the weekend.
We are still waiting for our strikers to hit their first league goals of the season and Saturday would be a good place to start.

I mentioned our reserve game earlier and the boys put in another good shift and an even better performance as we managed a 5-1 win against Partick Thistle.

Phil Storey did his chances of a recall no harm with a hat-trick with Lee Hoolikan and Mike Jack also scoring in a match that gave some of us some much-needed game time and an opportunity for others to give their confidence a boost.

It was important to find the net and the quality of some of our goals was outstanding. Let's keep our fingers crossed that we have saved a few more for this weekend.