Berra: Rovers fancy return to big time

CHRISTOPHE BERRA reckons Raith’s young stars have got a taste of the big time after their Parkhead experience.

The veteran defender was gutted to go out of the Premier Sports Cup to Celtic on Thursday but the visitors’ performance has given them confidence for the promotion race.

Berra said: “A lot of our boys have never played there before. They aspire to play at venues like this. We have a lot of youngsters who have a real chance of going up a level — whether at Raith Rovers or elsewhere — and this will have been invaluable. We did really well to get to this stage. We took a big scalp in Aberdeen but our bread and better is the league.

“We enjoyed the experience of playing at Celtic Park. We’ll learn from it and move on.”

John McGlynn’s men came close to going up last term and Berra feels they are better equipped for a charge this time around.

He said: “I wasn’t involved at Raith last season but, with the way they performed, they were really unlucky to lose in the play-offs.” Jags boss Ian McCall does not believe the fact Raith were putting in the hard yards at Celtic Park fewer than three days ago will have any impact on tomorrow’s game.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ve never, ever wanted to watch a team who were playing Celtic or Rangers two, three, four days before they play my team because other teams set up differently against those two clubs.

“We watched them the other week, they won 1-0, they are on a decent run and they have a really terrific manager, somebody I have got an awful lot of time for.”