Queen of the South defender Ciaran McKenna is targeting another revenge mission this weekend at Palmerston.
The 24-year-old scored in the Doonhamers’ 4-2 win over Alloa Athletic in the SPFL Trust Trophy as they exorcised the demons of their 5-1 loss at the Indodrill Stadium last month.
He said: “We know in the last two games against Alloa we’ve felt a little bit hard done by. The first game we felt we should’ve been out of sight but they got a late equaliser.
“Going there the last time we felt we dominated for 45 to 60 minutes and then we just collapsed in the second half so we were due a win against Alloa. We went there to put that right and we’ve done that.”
Now Kelty Hearts come to Palmerston with McKenna looking to make amends for October’s 1-0 defeat at New Central Park.
He said: “That was another disappointing result the last time we played and we’re looking to put it right.
“With Alloa being a Friday night game we had the weekend to recover and a full week to prepare for Kelty and we’ll look to do the same thing.
“It’s about getting the results. As long as we control the performances more often than not you’ll get the results.
“In the last four games we’ve put in good performances and we’ve only had one loss so if we keep putting in good performances then the majority of the time we’ll get results.”
McKenna said the performances have been getting better in recent weeks and consistency helps to create points.
He said: “We’ve put in a few consistent performances now. If you go back three weeks we had a good performance against Montrose, we played well for 75 minutes against Morton but didn’t get the result we wanted.
“Then we had a good performance against Dunfermline the previous week and going to Alloa we just wanted to keep that going.”
Queens boss Wullie Gibson is also wanting to put right the defeat from October and is targeting a strong finish to 2022 to lay the groundwork for a push for success in 2023.
He said: “We’ve got Kelty Hearts this weekend then we go to Falkirk and then we finish the year at home to Clyde.
“We’ve got three big games coming up and it can put us in a strong position if we get positive results and that’s what we’re looking to do.
“We went to Kelty and it was a battle between us. It wasn’t a great spectacle and they edged it with a goal I thought we could’ve dealt better with.
A virus that impacted the squad at the weekend is continuing to do the rounds this week. Gavin Reilly, Iain Wilson and Rico Quitongo missed Friday’s match with the bug which the manager and Lee Connelly have also picked up this week.
