ABERDOUR coach Lisa MacColl is targeting a title challenge after her side earned a second successive win on Saturday.

The Silver Sands outfit got the better of Kyles Athletic seconds in a 5-3 thriller in their Marine Harvest South Division One match that took them to the top of the league.

Roddy MacColl’s four-goal salvo against his former club, added to by David MacKenzie, gave ‘Dour the points which came on the back of a hard-fought 2-1 win at Col Glen in their previous game.

After suffering a nightmare 6-1 defeat at Lochside Rovers on day one, MacColl has been delighted with the turnaround in performances and believes getting back to basics will give them a chance of being in the promotion mix.

She commented: “It wasn’t a performance I know we can achieve (against Lochside) so we had a good chat before last week. We had a better performance; we’ve been working hard in pre-season and we talked about commitment, effort, doing the basics and taking responsibility. Against Col Glen, they started slightly stronger in the first 30 minutes and it took us a while to get going, but when we do, we’re really good.

“We looked to take that into the game at the weekend and it’s never an easy game, especially as their first team game was cancelled. We don’t seem to have the ability to start in top gear and crank it up as we go along and, for the first 15 minutes, they slightly edged it.

“The tide turned after half an hour when David got his goal, and in the second half, I felt our fitness told. I was really pleased; we did the basics and are talking to each other more. That makes a big difference in making the ball move and in our link-up play and I think the guys have taken that on board.

“We are aiming to be at the top of the league but we’ll try to win each game and see where it takes us.”

Aberdour were without Jack Mitchell, Cammy McCue and Ruariadh Reid but they shrugged that off to open the scoring through MacKenzie.

Although Sandy MacKenzie levelled for the visitors three minutes later, Roddy MacColl fired them back in front almost immediately by netting from the rebound after Angus Thorburn’s thunderbolt was saved.

MacKenzie drew Kyles level again just before half-time when he sent the ball past unsighted ‘Dour keeper Tom Bowerman but MacColl gave the hosts the initiative for the third time just three minutes after the restart.

Aberdour began to take control of the centre line and, just two minutes after scoring his second, MacColl completed his treble by taking advantage of a defensive lapse.

He made it 5-2 in the 69th minute by latching onto David McDougall’s clever pass to net and although Craig Martin pulled a goal back for Kyles late on, it wasn’t enough.

Coach MacColl added: “We seemed to step it up on Saturday and I hope it will give the players confidence in what they can do. Communication has been a bit of an issue for us over the last few years but if we can nail that, it will make a big difference.

“We looked a totally different team from the first game; our forward line didn’t quite work against Lochs and I take responsibility for that but we mixed it up against Col Glen and it worked, so we stuck with that on Saturday. We have a good mix of speed, skill, experience and stick work so it’s paying off.”