Spirit to overcome Saints

Chris Smith pulls on his experience with Saturday's opponents to identify what could make the difference as Pars face 'World Cup Finals'.

ADMISSION AND TICKET PRICES
Chris Smith was promoted in season 2005/6 while at St Mirren and escaped relegation the following season at the Pars expense.  This season he is challenged with the same task and it is one that takes on a new perspective given the change of manager.  The Pars keeper described the feelings since the changing of the guard:-

"Obviously it was sad to see the old gaffer go but the new one has come in and its just a matter of getting together and pulling through. We have eight games to go and as the Manager has said? it's eight World Cup finals. That's the bottom line of it.  Hopefully we can get a few results and get going."

All the players know how hard it was to get out of the First Division and how stringing a few results together would make all the difference:-

"We are all in it together and the boys know that. It's not a clean slate, it's just about keeping us in this league. Everybody wants to play in the top league in Scotland and we are in it just now and don't want to leave it and go back to the First Division."

The Pars Board hope to see the team get a lift from a new manager at the Club, one that Chris Smith had great respect for:-

"The new gaffer has massive experience, he's been at many clubs, but the old gaffer was unfortunate. There has been a lot of games where we should have maybe taken more out of but we need to pull together as a team and get ourselves out of the situation.

"When I was at St Mirren it was the second last game against Motherwell and Dunfermline went down that season. In the second last game against Motherwell we were two nil down and Dunfermline were winning one nil. Fortunately we won 3 - 2 and Dunfermline lost their game.  It's a team thing, it's not just about playing well on the Saturday, it's about making sure your opponent does not get the better of you and having that togetherness on the park. It's about pulling together and grinding out results."

Chris explained what St Mirren had that season that got them through:-

"The same as what every team has, it's the team spirit.  We might not play the greatest of football in the world but its just about digging in and scrapping for every point possible.  That was the point we stayed up but all through the season we just grafted away and got our reward and we got our breaks at the right time as well so that helped massively.

"We weren't bottom all season, but we were in touching distance.It was a team with good strong characters, like Kirk Broadfoot, Simon Lappin, Shuggy Murray, John Potter and that was a big part of our season. We probably had better luck than we have had this season with breaks in terms of points and being a couple of goals up but ending up drawing games. You look into our dressing room and we have boys in there that are more than capable of doing it."