Dunipace out of the promotion race, says boss Danny Smith

That home defeat at Westfield leaves the Pace in seventh spot on 32 points, eight away from the top three, having also played more matches than most of the teams further up the league table.

It has been an up-and-down season for the Denny club with inconsistency hampering their promotion chances.

“Being honest I think we have blown it as far as that is concerned,” Smith said. “I think Dunbar at the top have enough in their tank to stay up there in the top three and I also think Glenrothes could actually go on to win the league, they are flying.

"That leaves one space and the likes of Luncarty’s and Kinnoull’s will be rightly fancying themselves for that spot. We’ve played three more games than both of them, so they’d need to both take a really bad turn for us to get in there, and even then, we’d need to win all our games.

"Even after Saturday's game if we had won it, I reckon we would have had to have been untouchable until the end of the year. It is frustrating because I feel like we have enough to be challenging for that position, but the simple fact is that we aren’t.”

On Saturday’s loss, he added: “It was an odd game because we played pretty well and I couldn’t really fault the guys. We missed key chances and they scored all of theirs, that is the story of our season.”

Dunipace take on Armadale in the League Cup second round on Saturday.