Lichties star full of praise for ‘brilliant’ Pars manager

Thomas O’Brien will never forget how Stevie Crawford helped nurture him at Cowdenbeath – but hopes to come back and haunt the Dunfermline gaffer today.

O’Brien began his career with the Blue Brazil where former Hibs and Scotland striker Stevie Crawford spent the latter part of his own illustrious playing career.

Now the Arbroath ace, who’s preparing to face Crawford’s second-top outfit at Gayfield, is intent on denting the Pars’ promotion hopes this afternoon as the on-form hosts aim to add further fuel to their frantic fight for Championship survival.

Defender O’Brien said: “I’ve got so much respect for Stevie. I first got to know him when we played together at Cowdenbeath. He was just brilliant.

“He always helped the younger boys who looked up to him because of his experience.

“Craw was there for advice and was forever giving encouragement. I appreciated that and so did many others.

“I’m delighted to see him doing so well at Dunfermline. They are a Premiership club in my eyes and definitely have a chance of going up this season.

“I’m born and bred in Dunfermline so know how much it would mean to the two to see their team back in the top-flight.

“But my loyalty is with Arbroath. We are on a decent run just now and hopefully we can keep it going with another positive result.”

Dick Campbell’s basement battlers made it four games undefeated thanks to their midweek 1-1 draw with promotion contenders Inverness.

And O’Brien believes the part-time Lichties are all equipped to win their battle to stay up.

He added: “We’re getting our confidence back thanks to this run.

“It’s been decent in recent weeks and getting a draw with a team like Inverness can only be good for morale.

“We know what this league is like. Our main objective since the start of the season was to stay up – nothing has changed.

“We’ve shown against the likes of Dundee recently that we can compete with anyone on our day – especially at home.

“So we’ve got nothing to fear against Dunfermline.

“They’ll be favourites obviously, but Gayfield is a tricky place to come to and we want to use that to our advantage as well.”

Pars forward Fraser Murray hopes the Fife side have put their barren patch behind them after returning to winning ways with Wednesday’s 4-1 win over Raith Rovers.

Crawford’s side had only won one of their previous eight league games before overcoming their Fife rivals.

The on-loan Hibs player said: “We have gone through a sticky patch, but the main thing was not to lose most of the games that we drew.

“That shows that we are solid at the back, we just needed a bit of luck and we got that on Wednesday night.

“We never got that on Saturday against Hearts but we played well and created a lot.

“Hopefully we can kick on from here now and take the Raith performance into Saturday against Arbroath.”