HONESTY – It’s the minimum requirement for any game of football in this cutthroat league; anything less and you’ll be duly punished.

The Wasps got what they deserved for a wretched first-half display in this sobering humiliation at the hands of Honest Men.

Alloa couldn’t live with Ian McCall’s Ayr United and from the moment Jamie MacDonald hauled Michael Moffat down for a penalty this was always going to be the Ayrshire side’s day.

Questions will rightfully be asked about the tactical approach with the narrow formation badly exposed by the pace, dynamism, and hunger of Ayr. However, it would be doing a disservice to put the first-half solely down to Alloa’s inadequacies.

Perhaps most worryingly will be the lack of any real options on the bench to inject a shot of life into Alloa arms. Jon Robertson and Adam Brown were both thrown on at half-time and admittedly held their own, but the rag tag bunch of youngsters who took the other spots remain untried and untested.

For Ayr, they benefited from a number of enthralling displays, but Stephen Kelly was a class above. His elegance on the ball was unmatched long before he was involved in baiting MacDonald into fouling Moffat for the spot kick.

This was no doubt on the keeper’s mind when he horribly misread the Rangers loanee’s corner minutes later to generously hand the returning Sam Roscoe a chance he couldn’t miss.

How Alloa could have done with their former man at the heart of their own backline and Roscoe’s mature showing was a stark contrast to the panic in the Wee County every single time a red shirted visitor strode forward with menace.

No more so than Alan Forrest: The little winger bagged a brace and kicked things off by thundering home the opener from the spot.

Frustratingly, it was actually Alloa who had started the better of the two and Kevin O’Hara’s delicious ball across the face only needed a tap-in. Seconds later, Liam Dick teed up Liam Buchanan on the edge of the box, but he screwed his shot agonisingly into Ross Doohan’s arms.

That was that, though, and when Ayr sucker punched the wounded Wasps with Forrest and Roscoe’s goals inside the opening 15 minutes, Alloa’s feeble resistance folded with barely a whimper.

Ayr players were queuing up to get in on the action. Robbie Deas threw himself in the way of Moffat’s rasping drive before the veteran striker combined well with Kelly to sting MacDonald’s palms.

But the respite was only momentary and Moffat couldn’t believe his luck as he was again given the freedom of the Wee County and Luke McCowan fired home his perfectly weighted ball into the bottom corner.

The Wasps were stunned. So much so they allowed Forrest – hardly a giant of a man – to ghost through the defence and bullet a header beyond MacDonald to complete Ayr’s first-half scoring.

A statement performance was required on the other side of Peter Grant’s half-time dressing down and Alloa delivered an improved showing; although it would have been difficult to fall to the levels of the first 45.

The introduction of Brown on the left offered much needed width, but it was O’Hara who did his best to drag the Wasps forward.

The former Falkirk player tested Doohan with a couple of drives before he eventually got in ahead of Aaron Muirhead to nod home Robertson’s cross and secure a consolation.

However, in the end, it truly was Honest Men against boys.

ALLOA: MacDonald, Taggart, Dick, Deas (Robertson 46), Graham, Hetherington, Cawley, Flannigan, Buchannan (Brown 46), O'Hara, Thomson. UNUSED SUBS: Henry, O'Donnell, Gillespie, Gilhooley.