Queen of the South have a “massive opportunity” tonight in the SPFL Trust Trophy semi-final against Hamilton Accies.
Boss Marvin Bartley isn’t long in the door at Palmerston but he’s got a great chance to continue his strong start to life in the dugout at Dumfries with a win.
He said: “It’s a massive opportunity.
“It’s not very often you get the chance to play in a semi-final. It’ll be a brilliant game for everyone so I’m looking forward to it.
“Being a manager for three and a half weeks and being in a semi-final – it doesn’t come much better than that.
“Hamilton are favourites, it’s at their stadium and they’re in the league above us but we’ll have a game plan and hopefully come out victorious.”
Ruari Paton made Bartley eat his words after his stunning free-kick was the difference on Saturday against Edinburgh.
The Irishman’s 25-yard set-piece curled into the net in the second half to give Bartley back-to-back wins ahead of tonight’s semi-final.
He joked: “Don’t remind me of the goal!
“All week I’ve been giving Ruari stick when he’s been hitting the mannequins at training with free-kicks. And then he does that in the game.
“He shouted across to me: ‘Gaffer did you see that?’ but I couldn’t because the rain was in my eyes so I never saw it so who knows if it was a good goal.”
The manager was delighted that his side showed character to overcome a difficult start to the game and see it out to go six points off the play-offs.
He said: “I thought for 60 minutes of the game they were tremendous but there’s still things to work on, we aren’t the finished article. But the most important thing was the three points.
“I said to them ‘I don’t want to put a dampener on your weekend but we have to perform better for longer periods’.
Tonight’s game is live on BBC Alba and kicks off at 7.45pm.
