Thorniewood United boss Jamie Nesbitt was proud of his side’s 2-1 West of Scotland League Cup win over Blantyre Vics, and believes it shows how far his side have come this season.
Nesbitt says he and assistant Chris Dolan were left wondering what was in store for them this season as ’Wood struggled in pre-season and then lost their Conference B opener against Ardeer Thistle.
But beating Premier League opposition proves to Nesbitt they’re on the right track.
Ally Small and Adam Watt gave the Viewpark side a 2-0 interval lead, before Sam MacKenzie pulled a goal back for Vics with a second-half penalty – though Aaron Black sent a similar award over the bar.
Nesbitt said: “The boys, to a man, were outstanding.
“We actually made five changes , with people who hadn’t been getting a game. We changed the system to a 4-3-3 and it worked on the day, so I was really proud of them, because we’ve come a long way.
“We never won a fixture in pre-season, and then lost our first league game to Ardeer Thistle – back then we were thinking ‘what way is this going to go’.
“It’s all credit to them, they’ve put all the hard work in and they’re the ones who are performing week in, week out, so I was really proud of them at the weekend.”
Thorniewood travel to Nesbitt and Dolan’s former club Royal Albert this weekend and while they parted on good terms, Jamie’s looking for a valuable three points to continue their march up the league table.
The Robertson Park side are currently fourth in the table, four points off second-placed Gartcairn, and Nesbitt hopes to keep that going.
He said: “It will be interesting; I think we’ve only been back and played Royal Albert at Stonehouse once since we took over.
“You can see, week on week, that their performances are getting better, their results are improving, so we’ll go into that completely professional.
“Everybody’s got to play each other twice, and you can’t start trying to bag points from certain fixtures, because it just doesn’t work like that.
“We’ll just keep plugging away; we’ve still got Greenock, Cambuslang and St Cadoc’s, there’s a lot of things that are going to happen between now and the end of the season.
“Nothing’s guaranteed, just because you’re on a run of good form, but long may it continue.”
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