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Daily Record
Sport
Andy McGilvray

East Kilbride Thistle co-boss sets target for final games as he makes 'story of our season' admission

East Kilbride Thistle co-boss Russell Craig has set his sights on wins in their last two West of Scotland Conference C clashes, to end the season on a high.

The Jags take on St Roch’s at James McGrory Park on Saturday before hosting Vale of Clyde in their finale on May 7, knowing that six points will take them above Larkhall Thistle and into 10th place.

Having beat Larkhall 2-1 on Saturday, Craig says that would represent a decent end to the season.

“Larkhall are above us in the league, so it was important that we got the victory on Saturday,” he said.

“We’ve only got two games left before the end of the season and they’re not massive for anybody else apart from us, but it’s important that we try and win them.

“If we win the two games we move above Larkhall, but St Roch’s on Saturday are a team who are sitting fourth, are a quality team, and we understand it will be a difficult game, because they’ll want to win their games as well.”

Craig says Saturday’s win was justified, but should have been a lot more comfortable.

He said: “We should have been at least 3-0 up at half-time, but as has been the case all season with us, we scored a goal, two minutes later we conceded an own-goal, and about five minutes later we went up and scored our second goal, which turned out to be the winner.

“They went down to 10 men when Josh Lindsay was sent off and it was a wee bit backs-to-the-wall for us, we were under a wee bit of pressure.

“We had the man advantage, but they got on top of us a wee bit, as sometimes happens.”

Craig added: “That has been the story of the season for us, and it’s frustrating.

“We know we can perform better than what we have, and we should have killed the game off when we were 1-0 up, but let them back into it.

“But it was victory that we deserved, and we never got any injuries, so that was a wee bonus, because in the last couple of weeks we’ve always had somebody limp off.

“We played a lot of good football on Saturday, but we were finding it hard to put the ball in the back of the net.

“We had chances we should have taken, and we hit the ball straight at the keeper, lacking a wee bit of composure in front of goal – but it’s easy, me saying that.”

Craig hopes Thistle can take a bit of confidence into the game at St Roch’s and says it’s full circle to when they took over from Iain Diack in July.

He said: “The last time we played St Roch’s was when we came in from the under-21 set-up and it was a bit of a baptism of fire for us.

“For the first 45 minutes we were like rabbits in the headlights, but in the second half we came out and played a bit of football.

“But we have some players back next week, who will be in contention, and we go into it with a bit of confidence.

“But we know St Roch’s are a quality team, we’re under no illusions about that.”

Follow Lanarkshire Live Sport on Twitter via @LanLiveSport, like us on Facebook or find us on Instagram for the latest sports news, pictures and video.

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