Raith Rovers winger Grant Anderson says he would love to keep the records against Rangers tumbling tonight following their historic Scottish Cup heroics 12 days ago.
The Kirkcaldy club recorded their first victory at Ibrox in almost 56 years to book a spot in the cup quarter-finals, and Rovers fans of a certain vintage will know that the history books could be rewritten once more if their team can repeat the feat in the league this evening.
Not since March 1970 has a Raith player scored a winner over Rangers at Stark’s Park, with Brian Cooper the last man to do the honours after dispossessing a certain John Greig in midfield.
So with a home success over the Glasgow giants now well overdue, Anderson hopes the current crop of Rovers players can use their most recent success to their advantage tonight.
“We won’t ignore the win at Ibrox,” he told Courier Sport.
“We will take confidence from that and realise that it is doable and we have the quality in the team to beat them.
“However, you can’t go into the game thinking it is a foregone conclusion that you’ll win the game.
“They will be desperate to respond to their recent run and are a wounded animal.
“We need to focus and do what we did at Ibrox.
“They could have two or three new players in the team so it will be a different dynamic.
“It could be new faces and new entities so it might be a very different game.
“However, if they put the same team out then the boys will know their strength and weaknesses.”
If the cup win over the Gers has done anything, it has at least helped Rovers forget about the two league encounters so far this season both of which ended in disaster.
A 4-0 loss at home was followed up by a 6-1 mauling at Ibrox, but Anderson is confident of a much closer match this time around.
He explained: “If we had gone into this game on the back of three losses to Rangers we would be thinking: ‘oh no, it’s Rangers again.’
“But we are more comfortable in what are doing.
“When you look at the length of time since Raith last won there, it sums up the achievement. “Growing up, Ibrox was always a fortress so to be able to say I’ve been there and knocked them out of the cup is something I can hold on to.
“Everyone was elated.
“When I left the stadium I had full battery, when I got home it was completely dead with the amount of phone calls, messages and texts.
“Everyone was keen to congratulate us and I had loads of calls from family and friends.
“I’m from Glasgow, so a lot of my friends support Rangers or Celtic.
“So I had a few calls from the boys supporting Celtic saying: ‘well done’, and a few Gers fans not happy that we beat their team!
“But everyone was happy for us.”
Rovers host Rangers on the back of yet another morale-boosting result, having earned a stoppage time point at home to Falkirk last weekend to extend their unbeaten run to seven.
“It is getting tight up there and we just can’t seem to make up those points on Falkirk, but if we can keep this run going then we will,” Anderson added.
“Then it’s about looking at Queens.
“In the end it was a good result for us.
“We managed to grind it out and it could have been much worse.
“It felt like a win at the time but, looking back, it was disappointing that we didn’t reach the standards we have been lately.
“We had Hibs on a big pitch, chasing the ball for 90 minutes, then we had Rangers on a big pitch and put 100 per cent into that game.
“You come back down to earth at Stark’s Park on a heavy pitch and, although you are desperate to win the match, we were a bit leggy.
“But thankfully we got the result in the end.”