CLARK EYES PLAY-OFFS PLACE
NICKY CLARK feels he can win promotion for the second successive season after playing a pivotal role in Dunfermline’s revival. Only a matter of months ago, the League One champions looked out of their depth in the Championship, but an unbeaten run of eight matches has hoisted them to the brink of the top four and reawakened their play-off hopes. Clark was part of the Rangers squad who coasted to the title last year and, while Hibernian and Dundee United look to be battling it out for automatic promotion, he feels the Fifers can make a concerted drive towards the end-of-season eliminators. The 25-year-old striker took his tally for the season to eight goals with a 25th-minute effort against Ayr United, before Andy Geggan secured a deserved victory eight minutes later. ‘I said after the Raith game you can see the confidence in the team is high just now, and it’s important that we keep that momentum going,’ said Clark. ‘If we can keep building on this run then we can hopefully get into the play-offs. ‘It’s important that we keep winning and try to close the gap as quickly as possible. ‘Confidence is a massive part of it and you can see every week now that the boys are buzzing and looking forward to each match. ‘That’s the big difference between now and the way we were playing at the start of the season. ‘Maybe it took a while to adjust to this league. Most of the boys are still here from last season when they’d have been used to winning week-in, week-out and cruising to the title. ‘But this is a harder league and the boys have now realised you can’t go into each game thinking you’re going to win — you’ve got to earn it by turning up and performing. ‘Maybe at start of the season we weren’t doing that, but now we are definitely putting in the good performances required and we’re getting the rewards for that.’ In stark contrast to Allan Johnston’s victorious visitors, Ayr are desperate to find some kind of cutting edge — though they remain seven points ahead of bottom club St Mirren in the league table. They got into great positions on Saturday but failed to take advantage. Manager Ian McCall said: ‘We’re close to getting a striker in and we have Craig Moore coming back so hopefully that will help. But I don’t think there’s too much wrong with the team overall.’