LOCHLIN HIGHET
Mark Shankland admits the carrot of promotion dangling in front of them will be enough to get Auchinleck Talbot up for the fight – despite not playing competitive football for 16 months.
The striker can’t wait to get back in action as they get set to make their West of Scotland League bow.
And despite the long break, Shankland says it’s all eyes on booking a place in the Lowland League for next season.
“It’s good to be back – it has been a long time out,” he said.
“We never started back last season, we still trained and stuff but after Christmas it slowed down and we were waiting for this season.
“Thankfully, it’s now time for that and we can’t wait for the games to get started.
“I think everyone will be feeling the same; privileged and fortunate to be back playing football.
“There is a lot of things we can’t do at the moment, so to do something we enjoy week in, week out is good.”
He added: “I think the boys have always been confident in our ability to be competitive even after a break.
“But everyone around us is strengthening their teams so it will be tough – but being up there and challenging has got to be the aim.
“It’s a strange one because we’ve never been in this situation, so you don’t know how you’ll react.
“But I think most of the boys have kept themselves ticking over because we had a rough idea it was going to start back in July.
“It’s going to be different, everyone has roughly 10 games in the first five weeks so I think then you’ll see where everyone is at.
“When you’re playing Saturday and Wednesday every week, if you’re not at it then you’ll soon be found out.
“Hopefully we will be up there challenging but everyone has been improving their squads.
“We’ve got the carrot dangling of winning promotion which is another incentive.
“But that’s not just for us, every team are trying to get their SFA membership to make them eligible to get promotion.
“There is a lot more at stake in this league now than there has been previously.
“Some teams are happy where they are, but other teams want to go as high as they can.
“As a player you want to go as high up the leagues as you can to challenge yourself, and we’re no different.
“First and foremost you want to win the league, but with the chance to go up it makes it better.”
Shankland admits it was tough to get going on the training pitch when they had no start date.
He said: “It was really hard getting motivated at training when we didn’t have an idea of when we’d be starting.
“Our training levels just weren’t the same either because of that.
“We are just thankful we are back this year, we are starting a wee bit early but I think that’s because of how long we’ve been out of action.”
He added: “Our last game was actually against Clydebank and that’s who we play in the first league
game. It’ll be interesting to see how we’ve changed since then and also how much they’ve improved too.”
Meanwhile, Shankland admits not going on loan while some of his team-mates did suited his own personal situation.
He said: “A couple of teams got in touch with me about going on loan to play, but it wasn’t the right thing at the time.
“It wasn’t something the club wanted and I didn’t want it at first
because it didn’t feel right.
“As it got further on I missed but I was a bit wary of the situati because my wife was pregnant the time so it suited me not to pl during that.
“A few of the boys went on loa even our goalkeeper went loan and a week later football w stopped!
“I looked at the bigger picture a just expected it to come to a halt be honest.”