East Fife 1-1 Queen's Park

Last season’s League Two winners Queen’s Park will win more than they’ll lose this season, the full-timers boasting an impressive squad of players.

But Darren Young’s East Fife, who are still clearly a few bodies short, showed one of the title favourites they won’t have things their own way a division higher.

The Methil men have had to endure a tough pre-season and Premier Sports Cup campaign, seeing summer signings depart the club before a ball was kicked, injuries to key players and surprise retirements.

But they dusted themselves down for the start of the new league campaign.

Young may be down to the bare bones, but those who he did have available to him gave absolutely everything.

There were no failures across the park, the defence silencing the threat of Simon Murray, the midfield winning their battles in that area of the pitch and the two forwards running themselves into the ground.

A lot of clubs in League One have a player budget East Fife can only dream of and Young will need his squad to go above and beyond at times this year.

They did on Saturday.

East Fife started the game well and took a deserved lead on eight minutes in stunning style.

Sean Brown, who put in a magnificent shift in attack with Kevin Smith, teed up Liam Watt on the edge of the box.

The Queen’s defence allowed Watt time to set himself for a shot and he punished them by sending his drive into the top corner.

Queen’s Park were being held at arm’s length by East Fife but were much improved after the break.

Barely minutes after they restart they were level, Charlie Fox heading past Scott Gallacher.

Boss Young said: “Overall it was tremendous.

“It was a great first goal from Liam Watt. It’s something we’ve been giving him a bit of stick for, asking him if there’s any chance of him scoring, and then he goes and pops up with that.”