BAW’S BURST IF YOU FEAR THE WORST
McDonald warns Jags must be positive
ON Saturday bottom club Partick Thistle take on Alloa for the right to stay in the Championship.
Just four points separate the Jags from the Wasps but time is running out and home striker Scott McDonald knows this is a match his side can’t afford to lose.
Thistle were the last club to drop from the top flight to the third tier in successive seasons in 2005.
And everyone at Firhill will be wary of the cost-cutting and redundancies which would follow for a club that finished in the top six of the Premiership two years ago.
But McDonald – capped 26 times by Australia and a veteran of Old Firm finals, Champions League play-offs and title deciders – warned his younger team-mates the worst that can happen is for them to think about the worst that can happen. The 35-year-old said: “This is a chance for us to win three points and you can’t allow the game to mean any more than that. “You can’t think about the bigger picture and what the result might mean or let your emotions become involved because all that can have a detrimental effect. “It won’t faze me because I’ll treat it as just another three points. I haven’t always approached games in this way but I guess that’s just down to experience – I’ve played around 600 games after all – and it’ll be up to me and the other older guys to calm everyone down. “We need to play the game and not the occasion.” McDonald hung up his boots after failing to win promotion with Dundee United last season but former Celtic team-mate Gary Caldwell lured him out of retirement and he made his debut as a supersub, scoring in a 2-0 win over Alloa in February. That result sent the part-timers to
the foot of the table and McDonald knows they’ll be chasing revenge.
He said: “I thought we’d put them to bed with that but Jim Goodwin’s done a fantastic job.
“They’ve won their last four games so we know it won’t be easy.
“Our form’s been good since I’ve been here. During that time there have only been two games when we haven’t given a good account of ourselves.
“Last weekend was crazy, we drew with Ross County who have lost just one home game all season but ended up dropping to the bottom because the teams around us won.
“But our main problem has not been turning draws into wins. If we can do that against Alloa we should be all right.
“Don’t forget we still have a game in hand against Ayr United so our fate is in our own hands.
“We don’t need to rely on favours from anyone else.
“What I want is for us to go out at Firhill on Saturday as though it’s the first match of the season and to be as confident and positive as every team are at that stage of the season.”