James McDonaugh labels Edinburgh City's win as one of best

Edinburgh City captain Craig Thomson scored the winner against Stirling. Pic: TSPL

Captain Craig Thomson’s 37th minute header proved enough to give the Ladbrokes League Two leaders their eighth consecutive victory in Scottish football’s fourth tier and their 12th in all competitions.

It’s a quite remarkable run for McDonaugh’s men, who lead nearest challengers Peterhead by two points. However, the Citizens have opened up an eight-point gap on third-placed Annan Athletic.

“Saturday was one of our best wins of the season as I thought it was a really hard-fought victory for the players,” McDonaugh admitted. “It’s a hard place to come against a team who have got more to achieve this season, and with the new manager (Kevin Rutkiewicz) in place, they will have been trying to impress him. So, it’s 1-0, another clean sheet and another three points.

“Our injury list has increased in the last few days so it actually made it really difficult to get a team on the pitch so the players deserve a lot of credit. I think they felt their standards slip last week despite winning (1-0 against Civil Service Strollers in the Scottish Cup) but I thought they gave everything to win the game.”

McDonaugh reserved special praise for Gareth Rodger, who made just his second league start of the season alongside the experienced Conrad Balatoni in central defence.

“Gareth has been fit for a while, but he’s just found it hard to get into the team,” he said. “I’ve said that to the players that it’s a real team game so credit to Gareth for waiting on his chance and he did well. It was great to see a big travelling support who were very vocal so I’m delighted for them.

“But they’re all tough games, especially when you’re top of the league so we’ll just take each game as it comes.”

Next up for City is the visit of Clyde to Ainslie Park on Saturday.