With his players not having had any meaningful action since November 22, Raith boss Gary Locke is understandably wary that they could be ring-rusty when they travel to face St Mirren tomorrow.
The Stark’s Park manager has been a fierce critic of the fact that his team have had what is to all intents and purposes a mini-winter break recently
That’s because of a combination of factors including the postponement of a home league game against Morton because of a rescheduled Scottish Cup tie.
Locke put his players through their paces in a closed-doors match last week but he knows he will only find out if his squad have recharged their batteries or lost their match sharpness when they kick off against the Buddies.
He said: “It’s been a while and it’s something we’ve been really disappointed about, the fact we’re at this stage of the season and we’ve not played for three weeks.
“It’s pretty poor, but there’s nothing we could do about it. It’s the nature of what’s happened and we’re certainly looking forward to this week’s game.”
When asked if he had any fears over his side being rusty, Locke added: “That’s obviously something we’ll find out on Saturday, but what we’ve done is tried to make use of the time without a match and played a closed-doors game, which I felt was important.
“I’m not going to sit here and complain about it, but it’s not been ideal.
“The boys have trained well and hopefully we can go into Saturday’s game with everybody raring to go.”
St Mirren finally broke their league duck in midweek against Queen of the South and Locke is fully aware their tails will be up after the morale-boosting win.
He said: “We’ve watched them in the last couple of games and they’re a different team.
“They’re playing a different shape, a different system and given some young lads a chance, which is great to see.
“They’ve some terrific young players, allied to some really good experienced players.
“It is a tough place to go but it will be even tougher now they’re on the back of their first win.
“They’ve got the monkey off their back during the week and that will probably be a huge lift for them.
“But by not playing we’ve dropped a position in the league, so we would like to try to get back to winning ways.
“We’ve been on a good run, we’re six games unbeaten, and we want to keep that going, but we know it’s going to be difficult.”
Long-term injured Craig Barr, Jason Thomson and Bobby Barr will all miss the St Mirren game while the club are still anxiously awaiting the full results of blood tests done on Scott Robertson to try to determine whether his ongoing groin problem is being caused by an infection.
Kyle Benedictus is suspended for the game after his sending-off against Ayr last month – after two yellow cards for dissent and a wild tackle – which his boss described as “crazy”.
However, Locke admitted that the big defender knew he had let himself and the team down and he did not need to tell him that.
He added: “Kyle is suspended, which is a blow for us, because it’s an area of the team where we’re not well covered.
“When Mango (Craig Barr) is fit again then we’ll have cover in that area but we’ve been pretty fortunate that Kyle and big Jean M’voto have played the majority of the games.
“With Kyle being missing, we’ll certainly have to reshuffle at the back.
“It was a crazy sending off and he knows that – but he’s a crazy boy!
“He’s been a rock for us this season and he held his hands up after the game. He knew it was a silly tackle.
“But the problem is it’s cost him a game and that will hurt him more than anything.
“It was a crazy tackle but he’s been different class for his this season so we’re not going dwell on that too long.”
