FRASER DUNCAN rued a lack of “cutting edge” in his side as Sauchie fell to a 1-0 defeat to Hutchison Vale over the weekend.

The Reds hosted Hutchy Vale at Beechwood after having had a week off, with their match against Musselburgh postponed due to snowfall.

With several key players out injured, Sauchie could not find a winner at home, with the visitors capitalising on a mistake to score the only goal of the game.

After the match, Duncan told Advertiser Sport a lack of instinct in the final third cost Sauchie the points.

“It’s a hard one for us to take,” he said. “We didn’t play too great, we were poor, the bodies being missing is catching up on us.

“Lucas Williamson was missing through suspension, Ross Hutchison and Ross Kavanagh were on holiday.

“We really struggled on Saturday, we didn’t have that cutting edge and we tried and tried to play some good football at times but we fell short.

“I’m really disappointed with the cutting edge in the final third, we didn’t have anything on Saturday and we were really poor.

“We paid for it, we’ve made a mistake and Hutchy Vale pounced on it and dispossessed us and went up the park and score.

“It was a hard one to take, really disappointing.”

Sauchie have struggled in the League of late, coming off the back of an impressive run which saw them pick up maximum points at home.

Since then, a string of injuries, suspensions and missing players has cost them in matches, with Duncan continuing to say he had a total of 11 first team players missing in action on Saturday.

“Injuries are killing us,” he added. “We had 11 players missing on Saturday which is difficult for any team to go through.

“I don’t want to sound like a broken record but we should still have won the game on Saturday, we still had a strong enough squad to go and win it.

“Unfortunately, some of the guys aren’t pulling their weight at the minute and some performances haven’t been up to standard.

“You need to go out on Saturday and you need to win your battles, play well and give everything for 90 minutes.

“We’ve not got that at the minute, we’re struggling in several areas of the pitch and that’s something we need to fix.

“We’re not happy with the performance, it’s not where we wanted it to be. If we had everybody on the pitch out working hard, we would’ve got something from the game.

“It puts a curtain on our push to try and be in title contention, you can’t lose games like that on Saturday.

“We now find ourselves mid table which isn’t where we wanted to be.”

Sauchie will now travel to Fife to face 14th placed Glenrothes in what will be their penultimate game of the year.