After surviving a shaky opening period Stenhousemuir ran out comfortable winners against visitors Berwick with a 2-0 win.

The visitors' John Whelan shot inches past in only the second minute and soon after that Colin McDonald saw a superb cross fly across the face of goal with no takers on hand as the visitors mounted early pressure.

Paul Ronald just failed to get his head on an Innes Ritchie knock on from a Whelan throw six yards out that would surely have opened the scoring and the visitors were made to pay for their early misses when the home side broke the deadlock in the 24th minute.

Martin Mooney played in a corner from the left that the Berwick defence failed to clear and when Peter Cormack's shot was parried by keeper Mark McLean to the feet of Colin McKinnon the midfielder swept the ball past the helpless McLean's.

Eight minutes from the interval Ritchie brought down David Menelaws in the box and the home side doubled their advantage when Mooney placed the resulting spot kick into McLean's top left hand corner.

John Gibson cleared an effort from visiting sub Darren Smith off the line in the 80th minute but apart that incident the home team were rarely tested.

And the game ended up a fairly straightforward victory for Stenny.