St Cuthbert Wanderers head into a three-way battle for promotion this weekend.
The South of Scotland League champions face East title winners Tranent in East Lothian on Sunday before taking on West champs Darvel on Wednesday night.
Their opponents then face each other a week on Saturday, with the team with the best results gaining promotion to the Lowland League.
Saints boss Jordan Williamson said: “It’s essentially two cup finals for us and anything can happen in one-off games. We’ll be looking to go strong but we’re not naive – we know the advantage in terms of population density, better quality of player and financial support these clubs have got compared to ourselves.
“We’re not naive enough to think we can 100 per cent go toe to toe with these clubs. Yes, we’ve brought in better players from the west leagues and from pro-youth academy but, in comparison to the players these two clubs have been able to attract and the clubs they can sign players from, it’s night and day.
“We’re going to prep as best we can. We’ve looked at both teams, we understand how they play and we’ll give as good an account of ourselves as possible and wait and see what happens.”
Saints warmed up for their promotion push by beating Nithsdale Wanderers 4-2 in the Haig Gordon Cup final at Palmerston on Friday.
Nithsdale raced into a two-goal lead but Thomas Kelly reduced the deficit before the break with a penalty after Scott Ballantyne was fouled.
They drew level early in the second half through Russell Williamson with Kelly putting the Kirkcudbright side in front nine minutes from time.
And in the final minute he completed his hat-trick with another penalty, this time after a foul on Liam Fleming.
Williamson said: “We’re delighted to bring the Haig Gordon Cup back to Kirkcudbright. One of our goals at the start of the season was to win that trophy as we know how much it means to club and the town.
“We’ve said before that playing the same opposition as the week before is tough – it gives you a lot of information to go off but it also blurs your vision in terms of focusing on a different game and individuals.
“On the Wednesday we came up against the Mckenzie brothers on a small, tight pitch and we were able to nullify them by playing a high line.
“We did that on Friday and were caught out, especially in the first half – 2-0 was flattering to us as they had clear-cut chances to go further ahead before we switched on to what was happening. As much as we were 2-0 down, I could see we had the quality to turn the game around and I never started to panic. We tweaked a few things and we got the result to match the second-half performance.”
There may still be more silverware to come for Saints.
Next week they play Threave Rovers in the League Cup final before facing the same opponents in the Potts Cup final after they beat Creetown on Monday night.
After a goalless first half, a double from Fleming and a goal from Luke Currie saw them march on.
Williamson added: “It was a good performance by the boys. We didn’t really need to come out of second gear as we had a lot of possession, worked the ball well and dictated the game.
“Creetown came down with a depleted squad and made it tough for us. They could quite easily have rolled over but they had some opportunities and caused us a couple of problems.”
