Steven ready for step up

"Last season I played in every game although I only started 18 or 19 of them. I'd like to start more games this season but it is a squad game and I will just need to bide my time.

Not even the distraction of getting married has helped Steven McDougall whittle away the days waiting for the SPL season to kick off. Just over six years after making his professional debut in Airdrie's 1-0 First Division win at Starks Park, Steven has finally made it to the top division. But Steven made his move from Airdrie United for just the kind of thing that has happened to him in the last few months.

"I could only work hard and take whatever luck comes your way. Thankfully it did with winning the First Division last season. At Airdrie their ambition was always to stay in the division but Dunfermline's was always to win it and go up.

"I really enjoyed it at Airdrie, we always seemed to have a good team and good managers who wanted to better themselves but we were always neat the bottom of the First Division. When we got relegated but we got luck to Gretna and Livingston's misfortune and ended back up. Right from the start of the season we were battling to stay in the division."

Now Steven at the age of 25 hopes to play his part in Dunfermline's SPL return:-

"We have real good players and quite a lot of SPL experience, hopefully that will mean that we can have a good season."

The Manager has built a squad designed to have competition for every position in the team and Steven welcomes that:-

"If there is no competition and you were guaranteed a game then you would get slack. Hopefully I have shown the gaffer enough in pre season to get a start. If not then I will just have to keep working harder.

"Last season I played in every game although I only started 18 or 19 of them. I'd like to start more games this season but it is a squad game and I will just need to bide my time."

Looking forward to the challenge of a new league, new opponents and new grounds Steven feels that it will be completely different from the likes of one off cup games.

"We need to match that standard week in week out, it is a big challenge but a challenge that we want to be involved in. Obviously we will need to respect the teams that we are playing against; we cannot go gun ho but need to have a good game plan that hopefully works out for us. A cup game is just one game and when you are the underdog you have nothing to lose whereas in the league you need to pick up points to stay in the league."

The SPL survival record of teams newly promoted is really good. In the last ten seasons only Gretna have dropped out after one season and some like Livingston even finished third. Not having ever played in the SPL, Steven doesn't really know what the standard is going to be:-

"Teams like Inverness have gone up and done really well. Hopefully we can do the same; obviously it is a very hard league and we need to try and do what Inverness did. We will definitely give it our best shot."