St Andrews United 1-0 Whitehill Welfare: Saints boss Robbie Raeside responds to Welfare's angry claims that winning penalty shouldn't have been awarded

Welfare claimed that United striker Lewis Sawers – who went on to score the spot kick which sealed a 1-0 win and put Saints fourth on 30 points from 13 matches – had slipped before their defender made contact with him on 51 minutes.

“I didn’t see it clearly but I’ve been told by a number of people that were close by that the guy had a hold of Lewis’ shirt and it was an obvious shirt pull,” manager Raeside told the Herald and Citizen. “Lewis went down in the box as he’s entitled to do.

"That’s what’s been seen by the referee and made him give the penalty.

"It was unnecessary. It was probably a bit of frustration on their part because Lewis was actually running across the box and away from goal at the time.

"We had another couple of claims from corners when people got wrestled to the ground and shirts got pulled. We never got penalties for them.

"But if you are putting balls in the box and attacking, eventually things come for you.

"It was a controlled performance. We never set the heather on fire but we were always the better team, always dominating and it was just a case of when the goal was going to come as far as I was concerned.

"Whitehill will be disappointed. They came to shut up shop and put in a good performance but it’s not like they can say they were hard done by losing the game 1-0.”

Sawers later went off injured after 63 minutes to be replaced by new signing Lewis Payne, but Raeside expects his top scorer to be fit for United’s next league game at Heriot-Watt University on Saturday, December 30, kick-off 2pm.

He added: "Lewis just had a tight calf. It was just a precautionary measure taking him off.

"He had had a tight calf previously and it tightened up a bit more. It gave me an opportunity to give Lewis a run. I thought he acquitted himself very well. He’s only been in the door a couple of weeks but previously knew a couple of the players which helps.”