Arbroath endured a torrid 90 minutes at Stair Park as they were beaten 1-0 by Stranraer but they held on to clinch promotion to the Irn-Bru Scottish League second division thanks to their two-goal lead from the first leg, played last Wednesday.

After two previous play-off defeats in recent seasons, John McGlashan, the Arbroath manager, was left breathing a sigh of relief at the end of a match which saw his side reduced to ten men for much of the second half.

“We’ve not had the greatest luck in the last two seasons and even during the play-offs we’ve had to work really hard to get the victories that we have achieved. We were probably due a wee bit of good fortune,” McGlashan said afterwards.

“Stranraer were fantastic – they really went for it from the start and put us on the back foot from the first to the last minute. By and large, it was total domination from Stranraer even before our reduction to ten men.

“But fair play to our players for standing up to that barrage. They defended like lions out there. At the end it was the longest 20 minutes of my football career – it was an eternity.” Stranraer produced the better of the scoring opportunities in the first half taking advantage of the strong breeze that favoured them.

Youngster Gerry McLauchlan saw his header cannon off the crossbar before their prolific striker, Gregory Tade, clipped the outside of the post with his effort from the edge of the area.

The game really came to life on 58 minutes when Craig Tully, of Arbroath, was shown a straight red card by the referee for a heavy tackle from behind on Danny Mitchell.

Five minutes later Stranraer came back into the tie as Tade gave them the lead on the day after good build-up work from Ian Dobbins and James McKinstry.

Derek Ferguson, the Stranraer manager, asked his side to throw everything into scoring a second goal to take the match into extra-time but they were thwarted by an excellent Arbroath defence.

“Arbroath are a big, strong, physical side,” he said. “We didn’t handle it too well on Wednesday night – I’ll take the blame for that because I probably picked the wrong team. I probably tried to go for it a wee bit more than I should have, but that’s the way I like to go about things.

“Today, the players weren’t bullied and they were superb – I couldn’t fault them.”

Attendance 836