East Fife sailed to the top of League Two thanks to Nathan Austin’s hat-trick against Montrose.
The Gable Endies went into the clash at Links Park with a perfect home record, but that was left in tatters by Austin’s treble and Scott Mercer’s superb strike.
“In the first half, to be honest, I thought Montrose edged it,” East Fife boss Gary Naysmith said.
“For us to come in 1-1 at half-time, we were really happy.”
He added: “It was our best result of the season without being our best performance.”
Gary Fraser put the hosts deservedly ahead on 20 minutes, flicking the ball over Ryan Goodfellow after a lofted ball forward.
Gavin Malin and Ross Campbell forced top saves out of the visitors’ keeper before Fraser should have made it 2-0 after a one-on-one.
It was all Montrose until the 43rd minute, when a long ball out of defence split Greg Pascazio and Matty Allan and Austin burst through the centre-half pairing, making a 50-yard run before rounding Ross Salmon and finishing with ease.
It was the hosts who started the second half more brightly, but then Austin popped up to make it 2-1, forcing the ball over the line after Salmon had blocked his back-post header.
The Gable Endies’ afternoon went from bad to worse when Pascazio was given a straight red card for striking Kyle Wilkie in the face with a high-footed challenge before Mercer got the best goal of the game, cutting past Ryan Ferguson and firing across Salmon’s goal into the top-right corner.
The hosts tried to respond, but Austin secured the match ball with a lovely dinked goal.
Montrose boss Paul Hegarty said: “Our defenders are young and on their learning curve. It’s an expensive learning curve.
“We’ve really got to regroup.
“It’ll be a real test to see how they react and respond to that defeat.”