Rovers’ plans hit stumbling block

Ian Murray admits Raith Rovers are struggling to piece together the perfect preparations for their promotion play-offs – because everyone else is either on holiday or too busy.

Ideally, the Stark’s Park outfit would play a bounce game for this week, given they are idle awaiting their semi-final opponents.

While Airdrie and Partick Thistle battle it out to progress, Raith will have had 11 days without action by the time they face the winners next Tuesday.

With the Rovers players getting some time off in the wake of Friday’s 5-0 hammering of Arbroath, Murray is determined to piece together the best build-up in the circumstances.

A friendly is unlikely to be part of that, however, with teams either involved in the play-offs or finished for the summer, and Premiership sides finishing the campaign with three games in a week.

“We have made inquiries with a few teams about a bounce game,” Murray explained.

“But it’s so difficult. Nobody really wants to play at this stage of the season.

“That makes life hard for us. “If not, we’ll maybe do something in-house, depending on our numbers.

“If we can’t do that, we’ll just have to go and prepare as best we can for whoever we’re playing in the play-off games.

“At the moment, we couldn’t take on a game anyway due to the numbers coming back into training (from injury). Then, when we get them back, we want to keep them back.

“We have tried (to get a bounce game) but nobody wants to play at this stage in the season, when everyone is kind of finishing.

“But we’re quite glad to get a wee break as well. It gives us time to get over a few of the bumps and bruises.

“We’ve not got anything serious, but it’s probably good for us to just have a wee reset and let the boys get back.”