THIS campaign has been a novel one for Harry Milne in many ways. The Partick Thistle left-back, recruited from Cove Rangers on a pre-contract agreement in the summer, has been ticking off all sorts of firsts this term.
This is Milne’s first season at Firhill. It also happens to be the 26-year-old’s first campaign as a fully-fledged professional. And now, for the first time in his career, he has suffered some serious adversity on the park, too.
As a long-serving member of the Cove squad prior to his summer transfer, Milne has played an important role in the north east club’s surge up the Scottish football pyramid in recent years. It means that the left-back has always been part of a winning team – something that the Jags are decidedly not at the moment.
The past four weeks have been nothing short of disastrous for the men from Maryhill. A 4-1 defeat at Pittodrie in the League Cup quarter-finals set the tone for the following five fixtures in the league. Thistle have lost all five, plummeting from first to seventh in the standings, shipping 16 goals along the way.
“Obviously it’s not the kind of results we would be looking for in the last few weeks, for one reason or another,” said Milne, speaking to promote Purple Thistle Day at Firhill this Saturday which will raise funds for and awareness of Pancreatic Cancer Action Scotland.
“I feel like we haven’t played too badly in large parts of the games, just 20 minutes here and there – but we’ve ended up losing two goals, three goals in some cases.
“Runs like this always come to an end and this is a perfect opportunity. It’s a winnable game, no disrespect.
“We’ve been missing some big characters. If you look at the spine of our team, Kevin Holt, Ross Docherty and Brian Graham, they are three big leaders – probably your captain, your vice-captain and your vice-vice-captain there. So yeah, it’s no excuse to say they’ve been missing, guys like Tiff, we can’t say the run we’ve been on is justified. But having them back will help the team.
“This is the worst run of my career. I mean, I was playing at Cove before in the Highland League, playing teams like Fort William – picking guys off the street to play on a Saturday! You were never too far away from a win. I’ve been lucky in my career so far to have played in successful teams, going the right way.”
This afternoon’s home clash with Arbroath provides an opportunity for McCall and his players to turn the tide, and Milne admits that he enforced absences of key players hasn’t helped.
Captain Ross Docherty and Kevin Holt remain sidelined for today’s contest but the return of Brian Graham, Aaron Muirhead, Scott Tiffoney and Cole McKinnon to the matchday squad offers some grounds for cautious optimism that Thistle can arrest their slide and get their title tilt back on track.
“I feel that this squad can deliver that this year," Milne said. "It’s not been the best of runs for us, we’re all aware of that. But I feel like picking up two wins in the next two games – a winnable home game and then the Scottish Cup [against Kelty Hearts] – will take us into December in good shape.
“I don’t think it’s harder because I’ve not been through it before. It’s annoying. Everybody wants to win. You’re in the wrong game if you’re happy losing. I don’t think it’s harder, though.
“We’ve got a mentally strong bunch and, personally, I don’t find it hard to get motivated for the next game.
“Obviously it annoys me, I think about it the next day, thinks I could do better personally. Then we collectively look at the problems on a Monday, see where we can rectify them.
“We’ve had a mixture of bad luck and mistakes. Unfortunately for us they’ve all come at once, which is reflected in the goals we’ve conceded.
“We’ve lost goals from set-pieces, which is down to individual mistakes. We’ve had own goals. We’ve had different mistakes losing the ball where we shouldn’t. Everyone makes mistakes – but hopefully that’s us done with them for a while.”
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