Kirk out for Sunday success

"We will have a lot of supporters travelling up on the day, you can't let them down so I hope the performance we put on is a good one; you never know what can come out of it."

Andy Kirk went to the Semi Final of the Scottish Cup in his first season at Dunfermline only to lose to the rivals from the south side of the Kincardine Bridge but he has a cup winning record from his days in Northern Ireland that he would like to rekindle in Scotland.

"I have memories of winning more things over there than I do over here. I won the Irish Cup for Glentoran in the season before I left for Hearts."

That was back in 1998 when the 18 year old turned out in front of 8,250 fans at Windsor Park in Belfast to beat Glenavon 1-0.

"It was part time football but the same as a Cup Final over here. Maybe the amount of supporters might be less but it is the same feeling and the same desire to go and win and celebrate. It was a good experience for me as a young lad to have that success at an early age. I always wanted to progress into full time football."

Andy missed Dunfermline famous replay in Aberdeen in 2009 when Graham Bayne and Jamie Mole led the line but he hopes to play a big part this time around:-

"We are all looking forward to it.  It is not a game that is impossible for us to go and win. It's a break from the league and there's a wee bit of pressure off us in respect that Aberdeen are going to be the favourites to go through. They were the favourites a couple of seasons ago when we put them out on penalties. Since Craig Brown has gone up there they seem to be a totally different team so it will be a really tough game but a game where we can go out and see how good we actually are and put on a performance.

"We will have a lot of supporters travelling up on the day, you can't let them down so I hope the performance we put on is a good one; you never know what can come out of it."

Performances in the league, especially away from home, have been disappointing for players, management and fans alike but Andy points out they are still up there pushing for promotion:-

"We were very poor on Saturday; Falkirk beating Raith did us a bit of a favour but we need to get our league form sorted out pretty quickly because there are not going to be too many more occasions where we can drop points and go through a bad spell before its too late. We need to give ourselves a chance."

New striker Liam Buchanan is cup tied having played for Partick Thistle against Falkirk but he could have a big role to play in the second half of the league season:-

"I played with him at Partick for just over an hour. You get a feeling that you can link up with him, I feel that I can play with him. He makes good runs and moved well on Saturday, it was just unfortunate that we didn't play well as a team. We got a lot of high balls to deal with.

"We have lost Wullie Gibson and he was a good player for us. On his day he was frightening at times but he wanted to progress his career and has taken the chance to go down to England. He can put himself in the shop window down there so we wish him all the best. I just hope it goes well for him but we have a good even spell to go on and put in a good challenge for the title."

Andy has hit 16 goals so far this season, scoring in both the cup games against Montrose. He hopes to add to that on Sunday of course.

"Goal scoring is all about confidence; if you are hitting the net regularly then your confidence is up and you don't think about it. You just get into positions and the goals seem to come. You do go through spells of three, four or five games where you haven't scored and it starts to pray on your mind. You just keep doing the right things in the right areas, hopefully the ball breaks and you get yourself that wee run. Not so long ago I went four games without scoring a goal then all of a sudden you get one and the chances seem to keep coming again. That's just the way it is for centre forwards."