There’s good and bad points to having your game called off at the weekend.
There’s a chance for those carrying knocks or coming back to fitness to get their feet up and build their strength back up.
An opportunity for a breather for everyone around the club.
But also, the way Dundee’s season has gone, you can’t get beat…
The big downside of their home game against Ayr being called off last weekend is, for me, that the Dark Blues now can’t take advantage of the problem they’ve faced in recent years as the Premiership team in a Scottish Cup fourth-round match.
Often over the past few seasons, Dundee – and every other Premiership team obviously – have headed into these games against lower-league opposition on the back of the winter break.
For the Dens men, though, they’ve been caught cold.
Last year it was Queen of the South at Dens where Jim McIntyre’s side were lucky to get away with a draw before crashing out in the replay.
Under Neil McCann the previous campaign, Dundee were held at home by Inverness – yep, you guessed it, Aaron Doran scored that day, too – before Scott Allan saw ICT off in the Highlands with a fine goal before he departed.
A year earlier was the pick of the bunch, however.
Jack Ross had just taken over at St Mirren with the Buddies really struggling near the foot of the Championship.
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However, they took advantage of Dundee’s lack of match practice and were more than deserving of their 2-0 victory at Dens Park.
I always feel like the Premiership sides are at a disadvantage to lower-league outfits at this stage of the competition because they’ve been out of action while the underdogs have been playing every week.
And that’s an advantage Dundee have been denied by the weather last weekend.
Fair enough, they might have been thrashed by the Honest Men and gone into this one against Motherwell on a downer.
But you’d still fancy them to have a bit more sharpness about them than their opponents.
The Steelmen haven’t played a competitive game since the weekend before New Year.
With the way Stephen Robinson’s men have been going this campaign, Dundee might just need all the wee advantages they can get.
Rubbish weather has denied them this one but you make your own luck, as they say, and I expect Dundee to be right up for this one in any case.
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