Tough season for tough man

"We knew that it was going to be tough because the players that we have here are all First Division players

Martin Hardie feels that life with the Pars has been tough, not just now but ever since September:-

" We have started the season off as the First Division team coming up with the highs of that. We had a few decent results and then had a few bad results.  At the start of the season we knew that it was going to be tough because the players that we have here are all First Division players make no doubts about it.

" There are a couple of us who have played in the Premier League, gone up and down a few times and we keep ourselves in good shape in terms of fitness etc but at the end of the day we need to get some points on board between now and the end of the season. That is us now out of the Cup and we only have one thing on our mind now and that is not to finish 12th."

To someone with Martin's experience there can be little surprise that this bad spell has come along once the high of promotion wore off.

"Of course. I said when we came up from the First Division to the Premier you are always in the bottom six and fighting to remain in the SPL. You get to the point where you know that there are teams that you can play against and pick up points; we still feel that as well.

" If you look at last Saturday's game I felt that was the best we had played in a while in terms of formation and just the way we went about the game. We were in their faces and it was just unfortunate that we lost a goal right after we had got back into the game.

Hardie has led the team out with Austin McCann out injured and Gary Mason warming the bench and the stand in captain paid tribute to his manager for the way he never once blames injuries for making results harder to come by:-

"Fair play to the gaffer he has never once mumped about injuries in the paper. I missed ten weeks, Kevin Rutkiewicz etc etc. You could go on, he has not made that excuse and I don't see why we should. We just have to get on with it and try and get into a position to stay in this league."

It was typical of the Pars season that they looked more like beating Inverness in the Scottish Cup in the Highlands than they did at East End Park and with the team in its worse run of home form since 1975 maybe its a blessing that the next three league games are all on the road:-

"Everybody looking at our home form and realising that we have not won at home, for us to go and play away at Kilmarnock, Motherwell and (hesitating) possibly Aberdeen is good for us because it will let us go and focus on the dogfight. We will just get tore in like we did in a lot of games last year. The First Division was a dogfight until we got into a lead.

"In this league it is about working hard, having a good shape about you and being hard to beat. That's the way that it is going to have to be. Between now and the end of the season it's about accumulating as many points as we possibly can."

Martin is an admirer of the silky style that some have used to describe Saturday's opponents, he added:-

"Fair play to Kenny Shiels he has taken on the mantle from Mixu and promoted the same kind of brand that he installed in Kilmarnock. They have been playing it well and it is nice to see teams playing that way in Scottish Football because maybe from the outside people think it is kind of rough."