A five-star performance from City sealed a sensational victory at Meadowbank, with goals coming from Divine Iserhienrhien, Innes Lawson, Cole Williams and Malik Zaid, as the Citizens bowed out of the 2025/2026 league campaign on a high. Caitlyn Gordon reports:
Five changes were made to Michael McIndoe’s team that lost to Forfar Athletic. Shea Dowie, Callum Brodie, Dylan Williams, Cole Williams, and Divine Iserhienrhien replaced Mark Weir, Chris McQueen, Tiwi Daramola, Ouzy See, and Max Guthrie.
With only six minutes on the clock, City broke the deadlock as Iserhienrhien beat his marker and drilled the ball past Brett Long.
Dumbarton were reduced to ten men in the 27th minute as the referee issued a straight red card to Kai Kirkpatrick after a violent challenge on Innes Lawson. When the game restarted, Lawson bounced back by scoring City’s second goal of the afternoon, gliding past several Dumbarton players before slotting the ball into the bottom right corner to double the Citizens’ lead.
City continued to punish their visitors and went three goals up before the half hour mark. Outstanding link up play between Cole and Dylan Williams led to the former slotting cooly past Long from close range.
The fourth goal arrived not long afterwards. Greig Allen’s ambitious effort was parried back into danger by Long. Cole Williams picked up the loose ball and crossed to the awaiting Divine Iserhienrhien who scored from point blank range at the near post.
After dominating in the first half, the Citizens returned to the pitch carrying plenty of momentum.
While Jason Jarvis’ gilt-edged chance curled wide in the 58th minute, just a couple of minutes later, Zaid made sure of the points by picking up the ball, dribbling into the danger zone, and delicately rolling the ball past Long.
Shea Dowie didn’t have much to do for most of the afternoon, but had to be alert to thwart a Dumbarton attack and preserve his clean sheet.
Following the match, Michael McIndoe praised the Citizens’ performance:
“Fantastic game today, great to have all the players back, it’s been a tough 2 or 3 months because we’ve had a lot of the squad out. We’ve been losing a few games that I know we would’ve won.”
“I’m not being arrogant, but we would’ve won [had all the players been back from injury]. It was great to get everyone back on the pitch today, back to who we are, how we play, and the combinations were excellent today.”
“It could’ve been more than 5-0, I’m not being disrespectful to Dumbarton,” McIndoe added.
‘We moved the ball really well, found the pocket spaces, and we play like that nobody can live with us, let’s be straight about that, we’ve done it to many teams in the last two seasons.”
“I told the attacking players it’s important that we start hitting the back of the net and it’s been hard because I’ve not had those players available for the last two months. But today was great, as it was the first time in many, many weeks that I’ve looked and went that’s us because we have all those players back from injury and back on the pitch.”
The conclusion of the 2025/2026 campaign saw East Kilbride confirming their promotion to SPFL League 1 with a 5-0 victory against Clyde. McIndoe lauded the achievement,
“A fantastic job, Mick, his staff and players have done. I’ve done that myself down in England, coming back to back winning tier 5 and then going on to win tier 4. People think it’s easy; it’s not easy. They’ve done a remarkable job, so well done East Kilbride.”
Edinburgh City head into the first leg of the SPFL League 2 playoff match against Brora Rangers on Saturday, 8th. McIndoe issued a rallying call to the Edinburgh City supporters:
“We’ve ended our season, game 36 today, now we have our own little separate competition to keep this club in the SPFL.”
“There will be a big crowd here on the 16th [May] and we will be taking a few up the road [Brora] as well, this is a wonderful football club. I’m glad the boys are back playing today with a smile on their face, cracking jokes, it’s who we are; we are a different type of team, and when we play like that, we are very hard to play against.
