Thistle seeking home comforts
Struggling Jags look to climb table after month on road
PAUL THOMSON
East Kilbride Thistle assistant boss Stevie McPhilips hopes some home comforts can help haul them out of a relegation dogfight.
The Jags haven’t played at the Showpark in over a month and won their only league game of the season so far on their last home outing, a 1-0 win over Wishaw.
Since they last hosted a game, Thistle have conceded five goals in two games and had two matches postponed, including Saturday’s league clash away to Kello Rovers.
Thistle sit second from bottom in West Region Division One and on Saturday, fellow strugglers Glasgow Perthshire, who are four points and four places above the Jags, come calling looking to pile on the misery.
McPhillips said: “We’ve not been at home for the last four weeks, so hopefully we get the game on and we can start picking up the pieces.
“We know we are in a bit of a mini-league at the bottom and that’s what we have to focus on.
“We know what we have to do to get away from the bottom end of that mini league, but knowing what needs to be done and doing it are two different things.
“We’ve told the players every game is going to be a dogfight and they need to be ready for that.
“If you look at the start of the season, we drew with Shettleston and Greenock [first and second in the table, respectively] and even in the Ardrossan game [a 3-1 defeat] a couple of weeks ago, we were the better team in the second half.
“So we know we are capable. We can’t let the heads go down when things aren’t going for us.
“Getting the first goal in games makes a huge difference and that’s something we’ve not managed to do in most of our games.”
Saturday’s clash with Kello fell foul of a waterlogged pitch and McPhillips hopes the Showpark doesn’t suffer a similar fate.
He added: “It’s getting to that time of year where we see how our pitch will hold up.
“The last time we were at home and we beat Wishaw, the pitch was in great condition If there is a heavy downpour then it will be difficult.
“The boys are well up for the game and they were disappointed they couldn’t get the Kello game on Saturday to put recent results behind us.”
Kick-off at the Showpark on Saturday is 2pm.