SPIDERMAN
I dressed as Deadpool for training but really I should have been...
MICHAEL DOYLE brought the house down doing a passing drill in fancy dress but he insists Queen’s Park will never take rivals lightly.
The dressing-room joker rolled into training on Halloween in the full costume from Marvel superhero movie Deadpool.
Stenhousemuir can turn villains today as Ray McKinnon’s Spiders look to build on their four-point cushion at the summit.
Doyle, 29, said: “The gaffer knows I like to add a bit of fun, I’m good for the changing room and morale.
“It was good. I came in, did the full warm-up and the start of the passing drill dressed in the full Deadpool costume and had a bit of a laugh with it.
“I was better in the Deadpool costume than with my normal stuff on! I was considering wearing it on the Saturday to see if I could get away with it.
“The gaffer was brilliant with it, I’ve been with him at Falkirk and Laurie (Ellis) at Queen of the South so they know me, they know it is all light-hearted, good spirited and just keeps a good atmosphere about the place. We’re in a good place just now with the club.
“Hopefully when it comes closer to Christmas I might come in as Santa and see how the reaction is.”
Doyle and his fellow full-time Spiders have shown their own special abilities as the only one of 42 SPFL teams not to concede a goal in the league this season.
He added: “It’s one of the things we’ve prided ourselves on. I think everybody is looking at Queen’s Park, the players we’ve signed, and they probably overlook the fact that we have not conceded a goal yet.
“They’re probably saying, ‘If you’re the bigger team in the league then you shouldn’t be conceding goals.’
“Anybody in these leagues will tell you, it is not that easy.
“You are going away to Elgin, to Stranraer, to places where teams are good on their own park and it is not the best conditions or the best surface. To defend well and to win these games is a huge positive. I’ve been in this league before, made my way up the leagues with Alloa, and keeping clean sheets is a massive base to go on and win.”
For Creag Little, it’s a return to familiar surroundings as he heads back to Hampden for the first time having started out in the SPFL with then-amateur outfit Queen’s.
Today is about more than that for the Stenny defender, having had to self-isolate until the middle of this week after being classed as a close contact of a player who tested positive for Covid.
The welder, whose first night back at training was on Thursday, said: “Daytime telly, I don’t wish that upon anyone. It’s terrible. I must have watched the whole of Netflix twice, to be honest.
“I was just doing circuits on the floor in the dining room.
“We have got streams of the games so I managed to watch the Alloa and Annan game.”
On his Hampden return, Little added: “I don’t think we have got anything to fear and I don’t think the boys will be going there with any fear.”