East Fife 6-1 Airdrieonians

The Fifers celebrate with Chris Kane after he netted the side's fifth goal. Picture by Jim Corstorphine.

And the former world lightweight champ, an invited guest by the Fife board, would have been proud of the knockout performance by the Methil men.

If East Fife were a classy, six foot something heavyweight prospect, then poor Airdrieonians were a punch drunk journeyman, left staring up at the stars from the canvas.

This was as brutal a demolition job as any seen at Bayview for a while as East Fife’s power broke through the defence of their visitors time after time.

Sadly for Airdrieonians there was no towel to throw in and no call from ref Gavin Duncan to stop the bout early.

Because surely he would have, with East Fife brutalising their hosts almost from the start.

Almost, because it was actually the visitors who landed the first blow, taking the lead through Scott Stewart after a minute.

The opener only served to rattle the hosts who came out swinging and for the rest of the match put on a classy performance in front of their own supporters while Airdrie couldn’t lay a glove on them.

They were level when Kyle Wilkie got his first goal of the game when he slammed home a loose ball from six yards.

Things looked ominous for managerless Airdrie when Kev Smith’s fine through ball was collected by Chris Duggan and he raced in on goal before beating Kelby Mason.

East Fife had responded well to going behind but there would be no coming back off the ropes for Airdrie.

It was 3-1 when Mark Lamont fired home a fine strike from 25 yards.

At this point it became more about how many East Fife would score over any thoughts of an Airdrie fightback.

Wilkie got his second of the match when he squeezed his shot through a ruck of players to find the bottom corner of the net.

Airdrie were just praying for the final whistle and looked unable to protect themselves.

A further body blow came late in the game from Chris Kane with sub Greg Hurst landing the final, knockout punch.

Boss Darren Young said: “The last two league games we’ve probably created enough chances to win them and we should have picked up more points than we have.

“Sometimes you don’t get your rewards but we have today.”

East Fife - M Hurst, Docherty (Watson 76) , Dunsmore, Kane, Page, Lamont, Duggan, Smith (Flanagan 65), Wilkie (G Hurst 70), Millar, Piggott.

Subs - Goodfellow, Wilson, Reilly, Willis.

Airdrieonians - Mason, McIntosh, MacDonald, McGregor, Cairns, Watt, Stewart, Conroy, Furtado, Fry (Russell 46), Hastie (Brown 68).

Subs - Edwards, Allan, Ferguson, Higgins, Truesdale.

Ref - Gavin Duncan.

Att - 619