Gavin Reilly has underlined his determination to be a success with Queen of the South this season.
The striker, who was loaned out to Stenhousemuir for the second half of the last campaign, has shaken off question marks over his stint at Palmerston.
He said: “I’ve got another year on my contract, I want to be here, I want to stay, I want to play here, and I want to be successful here.
“That’s the aim, and that’s everyone’s aim this season. We need to improve on last season.
“The lads did really well come the end of the season and hopefully we can take that into this one.
“There’s a lot of competitive teams in the league but at the end of the day we know we’re good enough to compete, so we just need to work hard through pre-season, enjoy the cup games when they come, and hopefully progress in that and then look forward to our next league game. We’re all excited.”
Manager Marvin Bartley has stated everyone has been given a clean slate and he said Reilly was “the same as everyone else” in having to stake a claim for a place in the squad.
Reilly, 30, was able to use his stint with Stenny to boost his fitness and notched his first goal in Saturday’s pre-season friendly against East
Kilbride.
He said: “I played basically every game when I went there (Stenhousemuir). I missed the last game with a slight knock. I went there and played, got game time, scored a couple of goals and got a couple of
assists.
“It was good to go out and experience some of the different grounds, some of them I hadn’t played at.
“I’ve went away, and I’ve used that to come back fit this pre-season and I’m just looking to build on last season.
“It wasn’t good enough from myself and the team, but we want to try and improve on that this year.”
The new fixtures are unveiled today with Reilly eagerly looking for trips to Stirling Albion and Cove Rangers to try and complete the full SPFL set of grounds he’s played at.
He’s also looking forward to playing Annan Athletic in the hotly-contested local derbies.
He said: “The games down at Annan will be great, I can see it being a full house.
“I played at Galabank for the first time competitively when I was at Stenhousemuir.
“Personally, that’s nice to tick off, but we just need to take every game when it comes.”
