MANAGERS up and down the country talk on a weekly basis about goals changing games.

As it happens, missing a sitter has the same effect.

An hour into this tussle, with Raith Rovers holding a relatively comfortable 2-1 lead, Grant Anderson was presented with the chance to put the Kirkcaldy side out of sight as Brian Graham cut the ball across the face of goal to the midfielder unmarked two yards out. One wild swipe and 10 minutes later, Dumbarton had struck twice to take the lead, Raith's momentum had been lost, and their hosts were £14.99 down for a new ball.

"Not taking chances come back to haunt you, and it did tonight," said Grant Murray, the Raith Rovers manager. "We were still 2-1 up at that point. You should bury them and they are huge parts of the game, it would be great for me to stand here and say if we had scored that we would have won the game, but we didn't."

The game had started off brightly for Anderson, who drilled in from the edge of the area to double the visitors' lead on 25 minutes after Greig Spence reacted to pounce on a loose ball for the opener after just four minutes.

However, the Raith man was not the only one complicit in turning this encounter. Jim Lister was instrumental, the 32-year-old netting a hat trick in Dumbarton's second fight back from two goals down in four days. First, the former Brechin City man swivelled to smash home the hosts' first on 36 minutes, before bravely bulleting a Paul McGinn cross into the net just 90 seconds after Anderson's faux pas. And his evening was rounded off with another close-range header after Scott Agnew had converted from the spot to put the hosts ahead.

The victory takes Ian Murray's committed collective out of the play-off places in the first division and up into the comfort of eighth, 11 ahead of bottom-placed Airdrie United. The job the former Scotland midfielder has done since taking over in November is nothing short of astonishing, given their perilous plight under Alan Adamson. Last night their commitment to play the ball out from the back was commendable, even if their backline initially struggled with Raith's quick breaks.

"In the end I think we got what we deserved," said the Dumbarton manager, whose side travel to Lanarkshire on Saturday to face Hamilton Academical. "You don't want to criticise players but you'd be looking for one of your guys to score the chance Raith missed. If it goes 3-1 the game is probably dead and buried.

"We did overall and we can look forward to the weekend with confidence."