Matt Lockwood has revealed that the Dundee players have used articles writing them off as SPL no-hopers to provide them with extra motivation.
The Dark Blues were at their Sunday best at Tynecastle at the weekend, producing a stunning 1-0 victory against all the odds.
Dens Park boss Barry Smith was without eight injured first-team players as they travelled to Edinburgh to face a Hearts side who had gone toe to toe with Liverpool in the Europa League just last Thursday.
Despite that, Dundee took an early lead thanks to a Ryan Conroy penalty and then survived a Hearts onslaught, with keeper Rab Douglas in inspirational form as he saved a spot-kick from the Jambos’ John Sutton.
Lockwood insists the players are determined to continue proving the doubters wrong.
”We are all annoyed at being written off but out of that comes our sense of motivation,” he said. ”People are entitled to their say but what we’ve done is try to use that to motivate ourselves.
”We’ve got the articles tipping us to go straight back down up in the dressing-room. It’s obviously an old ploy in football but it means the lads see them every day and it gives them plenty of incentive to prove a lot of people wrong.
”That’s our overall aim this season to stay up and anything which makes us try that bit harder can only be good. It’s still early days but to get our first win at Tynecastle on Sunday has given everyone a big lift and it shows we believe in each other 100%.”
Continued…
Just prior to kick-off against Hearts, the Dundee players gathered together for their traditional huddle on the pitch but Lockwood revealed that the exhortations were much louder than usual.
He added: ”It was mentioned again in the huddle just before the start that nobody was giving us a hope of taking something from the game.
”I think after we’d lost to Queens Park in the League Cup it was pretty much accepted by most neutrals that Hearts would win. But we got ourselves together in the huddle and, to be fair, the boys were really fired up from that point on.
”There was a fair bit of shouting and encouragement when the lads came together which we then took into the 90 minutes.
”Having such a great start with Ryan’s penalty so early on was a dream and, even though we had to survive lots of pressure, we got there in the end so credit to all the lads for digging deep.”
Despite that first win of the season, Lockwood says no-one at Dens is getting carried away and he acknowledged that Dundee’s late addition to the SPL to replace Rangers means they may have to win ugly as they look to hoist themselves to safety.
He said: ”We’re not kidding ourselves on far from it. We knew all along that this would be a tough battle, especially as we were only told we’d be playing in the SPL a couple of weeks before it all started.
”We’ve had a horrendous injury list as well to contend with but what we do have is a tremendous team spirit. It won’t be pretty football every week from us because the main thing is to get enough points on the board to hopefully start moving up the table.
”We would love another game this weekend but that’s not possible because of the international weekend. However, we’ll have another good week in training and will be buzzing again in time for the Motherwell match the following weekend.”
Meanwhile, Dundee’s on-loan Celtic defender Lewis Toshney has been drafted in to Billy Stark’s Scotland Under-21 squad for the final two UEFA European Championship qualifiers against Luxembourg on Thursday at St Mirren Park and then in Austria four days later.