DAVID MARTINDALE admits he will be full of pride when he watches his former Broxburn team-mate Scott Pittman become Livingston’s record appearance holder away to Motherwell on Saturday.
The 30-year-old is due to make his 310th appearance for the Lions at Fir Park, which would take him above Keaghan Jacobs at the top of the charts.
Pittman first moved to Livingston from Junior side Bo’ness in 2015 after Martindale – who is now the manager of Livi – recommended his former Junior colleague to then Lions boss Mark Burchill.
“I’m extremely proud of wee Pitts,” said Martindale. “I’m a good friend of his family and I know they’re very proud of him. I tried on a number of occasions to get him into clubs when we were playing together at Broxburn.
“I was centre-mid and wee Pitts was an attacking mid at that point. He did my running and I did his shouting! We got him into a few clubs and got them to have a look at him.
“Then when I’d been at Livingston for about six months (as a coach) I said ‘look, how can we get him into the club?’. Mark Burchill was the manager and Burchy wasn’t overly sure at the time and I said ‘by the end of the summer, if you don’t think it’s going to be a good fit, wee Pitts will not be hard to deal with, we’ll shake hands and we’ll all move on’.
“I think he’d been at the club three or four weeks and got in the team and Burchy was like ‘brilliant’, and he never came back out the team under any manager who’s been here since.”
Martindale praised Pittman for his consistency levels.
“He’s brilliant, fantastic,” said the manager. “His level of consistency is his biggest factor. When Pitts has a bad game, he’s probably a 7/10 but most weeks he’s probably an 8 or 9 out of 10.
“He puts the team before himself, to his detriment at times. If he’s fit, he’s generally one of the first names on the team sheet.
“He’s one of those players who goes about his business quietly. He probably goes a bit unnoticed by a lot of people, but if you went into the changing room or the staff office and asked what their strongest team was, I think wee Pitts would be one of the few players in every single person’s team in this building.”
Pittman admits it will be “a special occasion” when he becomes a record holder on Saturday.
“I’ve been here seven and a half years and to play that amount of games is a good achievement for me,” he said.
“It’s been the perfect club for me. I’m really grateful to Davie. When I was playing with Broxburn, I had a few trials at teams but nothing really came of them. The gaffer got me the chance here and I’ve just tried to take it.”
