Peterhead head to Raith Rovers tonight in their second Group game in the Premier Sports Cup with Balmoor manager Jim McInally sending his further depleted squad out for the win that will keep alive Blue Toon chances of progression to the knockout stages.
Manager McInally will only be able to list 12 players, with on loan goalkeeper Jack Newman who shone in the 2-0 defeat from Aberdeen in the opening tie on Sunday- absent due to a prior engagement with the Tannadice club and Hamish Ritchie missing out due to the knee injury he sustained against the Pittodrie side.Recently signed Sandy Wood will be between the sticks, with Jim saying: “We knew Jack would be missing this game as he is at a training camp with his parent club. To their credit Dundee United delayed his journey to get out to Spain to allow him to play against Aberdeen.”
Sandy and I go back a long way. He was a young goalkeeper at Montrose and I was coaching at Celtic when he was brought into the Parkhead club. He went back onto play senior football for Montrose also had stints at Forfar, Arbroath and Cove Rangers, as well as playing junior for a number of years. “He is in good shape and I have no qualms about throwing him in at the deep end.”
Peterhead earned plaudits for their dogged display at the weekend in their live TV outing and Jim has challenged his players to repeat that performance despite the lower key nature of this contest as he explained: McInally added: “In a lot of ways, this game is a bigger challenge than the Aberdeen one. We received praised for how we played and it will be difficult to show the same levels of resilience and organisation in such a short space of time with such a small squad. ”We cannot change too much, however I recognise that in terms of this cup we are in the last chance saloon so we may need to open up a bit more and go for the three points.”
