Point away to league leaders Stenhousemuir keeps Raith Rovers in William Hill Championship title race
Raith Rovers might have let slip a chance to take possession of pole position in football’s William Hill Championship away to Stenhousemuir on Saturday but they’ve kept themselves in the title race by picking up a point.
That point – taking the second-placed Fifers to 21 from 11 fixtures, two behind their table-topping Ochilview Park hosts, having played one match more – was secured by a 46th-minute Jai Rowe equaliser after Michael Anderson had put Stenny ahead on 20 minutes in front of a crowd of 1,528.
That was Raith’s third 1-1 draw with the Warriors on the bounce after identical deadlocks at home at Kirkcaldy’s Stark’s Park at the beginning of August and on the road in April 2019.
Rowe’s goal was one of just two shots on target for manager Dougie Imrie’s visitors, half as many as opposite number Marvin Bartley’s Stenny managed.
Opportunity now knocks for Raith and Stenny to distance themselves from their chasing pack as they play their fellow top-four teams this coming Saturday, the former being at home to fourth-placed Inverness Caledonian Thistle and the latter away to third-placed Partick Thistle, both 3pm kick-offs.
“It was always going to be a difficult place to come,” Imrie, 43, told Raith TV afterwards.
“They’ve not lost at home in about a year and a half.
“My frustration is with our first-half performance. We had an opportunity to go top of the league but, no disrespect, quite a few of our players today wre just going through the motions and that’s what frustrated me because if we want to be up there challenging come the end of the season, that’s not going to be enough.
"The first half is probably where we let ourselves down. Potentially, we could have come away with a 1-0 win. Sometimes that’s all it takes, just that one goal, and you go back up the road with a clean sheet, but we made simple errors that could have been avoided.
“This team have not lost here in over a year and a half so to get a point is a really good point. It’s only their second draw, both against us, and it’s only their third game that they’ve dropped points in.
“It’s a really difficult place to come but if we could have played with the intensity we showed in the second half in the first half too, I think we’d have come away with three points.”