Sunday 30th January 2022
STUART CARSWELL had waited until November for the opportunity to take penalties.
Now it’s one he doesn’t want to give up.
The Dumbarton captain converted from the spot twice in yesterday’s 2-2 draw with Cove Rangers, giving him his first double goal haul in senior football.
And he revealed that prior to his goal from the spot at Alloa in November, he’d been waiting since the start of last season to hit a penalty.
The only one Sons were awarded last season was missed by Ross Forbes against East Fife in April. Stuart was not on the pitch at the time, coming on as a late substitute.
Before the Alloa game, that effort by Forbes was the only penalty Sons had been given since September 2019.
Stuart now has five goals to his name this season, four of them from the spot, and it’s been worth waiting for.
Speaking to www.dumbartonfootballclub.com, Stuart said: “I’ve never scored a double in my professional career – to be honest, I’d have taken one goal, but I’m happy to get two.
“I’ve been working on them in training, and I was due to take penalties last season under Jim Duffy but we were never getting them.
“In the first half today we had the wind against us, but we created more chances and kept Cove to very little. We had a few good opportunities but the penalty was the only one we put away.
“We had 10 minutes of madness at the start of the second half but got ourselves back into it and we’ve got to take the positives and move on from it.”
Having just taken on one team with a healthy unbeaten record, Dumbarton now face another this Saturday in the form of a trip to face Montrose.
It is the first of three road trips in a row, with visits to Queen’s Park and Clyde awaiting in the following week.
But with four away wins on the board already this season, two of which were at Montrose at Clyde, Sons will travel confidently.
And Stuart recognised the contribution of midfield partner Paul Paton, who has been beside him in the middle of the pitch in recent months.
He added: “He’s played at a high level, but it’s more of a team game and we’ll try to get the ball forward as often as we can.
“When we played Montrose down here we didn’t have a good game, but we go into every game confident we can get a result.
“We won there earlier in the season and we’ve done well in recent games, even after going down to 10 men against Dundee.”