East Kilbride News

Kilby up for Accies

But Winter’s still dreaming of massive cup upset

- Paul Thomson

Season gets underway with Betfred Cup clash

Sean Winter is dreaming of stunning Hamilton Accies in the Betfred Cup this weekend.

But the East Kilbride midfielder reckons the Premiershi­p side’s superior fitness will likely thwart an upset.

Last season’s Betfred Cup group stages conjured up a few shocks with Accies losing to Ayr, Peterhead beating Dundee and Alloa seeing off Ross County.

Winter reckons the Lowland League champions will be able to compete in Group G – which also includes Queen of the South, Albion Rovers and Stenhousem­uir – although he fears Hamilton’s full-time status will be telling.

The 29-year-old, from Whitehills, said: “Saturday will be a great occasion and a massive game for us, but the big issue for me is going to be fitness.

“Hamilton are a full-time team, obviously, and although both teams have been back training for a couple of weeks, we’ve only had about six training sessions.

“They will have had a lot more than that, training every day and some days maybe doing double sessions, so that’s going to be a big factor. But you never know what will happen.

“Looking at our squad, it’s essentiall­y a League One level of team with the players we have, so I don’t think there’s going to be a massive gulf between us.

“Annan beat Hamilton (4-1 in the Scottish Cup) a couple of seasons ago. That shows you that upsets can happen against them.

“I’m confident we can take points off teams in this group but this is a tough game for us.”

Kilby warmed up for their first competitiv­e match of the season by hosting a Celtic XI at the weekend.

Although it ended in a 3-1 defeat, Billy Stark’s men had a good workout and Winter reckons that will stand them in good stead.

“The Celtic game was a much better test for us than playing someone at our level and winning 5-0,” he said.

“In the Lowland League we are used to having the ball most of the time but with Celtic we were up against it. We managed to defend well for most of the game, we were hard to break down and still created some chances ourselves.

“That will help us for the Hamilton game because they will probably see a lot of the ball, although they will have a different approach to Celtic.

“The way Hamilton play in the Premiershi­p, they will have been working hard on being difficult to break down in pre-season, I imagine.

“I don’t think it will be the onslaught Celtic gave us but we still know we have a big test ahead.

“Our aim this season is promotion and playing in the Betfred Cup is just a bonus for us, so we’ll go out and enjoy it.”

Saturday’s clash with Hamilton is a 2pm kick-off at K-Park and following that EK travel to Dumfries on Tuesday night to play Queen of the South, kick-off 7.45pm.

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 ??  ?? Focused Winter is eyeing an upset but fears fitness will be an issue so early in the season
Focused Winter is eyeing an upset but fears fitness will be an issue so early in the season

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