Linlithgow Rose boss Brown Ferguson: This has been most challenging time of my whole career

The Prestonfield men took advantage of six call-offs to haul themselves up the table from ninth place as goals from David Brownlie, Owen Ronald and recent signing Kyle Wilson, his first for the club, eased them past ten men of Dunbar who lost defender Zach Szemis to a first half red card.

Brown, who described the past three months as the hardest of his footballing career, is pleased with the direction is squad is now heading in.

“Credit to the players and everybody connected to the club. People look at results, but I think every club has had their challenges and we’ve probably had more than most over the first two or three months of the season with the COVID situation,” said Brown.

“It has been the most challenging of my playing and managing career, it’s been incredible. There has been a huge turnaround of players, again, not that we had planned for that at all but with injuries, COVID and players moving out because of the financial situation, it has been turbulent.

“We’ve had an unbelievable run of injuries, we then had five players out isolating through COVID and it got to the point that I had to register as a player and strip myself - thank god I haven’t had to come on the field of play.

“The club asked players and staff to take a cut which is completely understandable given there is no income, but for some players that wasn’t for them, which I again I totally understood. It meant a lot of players moved out, which resulted in us bringing in loan players because we had to, to field a team, but over the last couple of weeks we’ve started to sign our own players and that is what you want, you want your own team.

“I feel as if we have turned a corner, and I am starting to see what resembles a team on the pitch that I am pleased with. We’ve won four on the bounce and I think there is more unity and cohesion about the group. I am really pleased and it is imperative we build on this now.”

Elsewhere, Broxburn Athletic threw away a 3-0 half-time lead as they lost to 5-4 at home to Crossgates, who netted a last minute winner to cap a stunning second half comeback. Chris Townsley’s men were flying at the interval after goals from Greg Binnie, Gary Brass and Cameron Ross, but they were well off it in the second period as the Fife club hit back in style. Brass got his second of the afternoon to make it 4-2 on 53 minutes but from then on it was a day to forget for the Albyn Park outfit. In 1st Division Conference A Leith Athletic made it seven out of seven in the league with a 7-0 mauling of Dalkeith Thistle.