Aberdeen 24h on

The deep depression which followed CIS final took its toll on the players. Butcher said after that game,”The players are devastated because this was the biggest game of their lives.” There followed an ‘international weekend’. Would the free week give the team time to get the debacle out of their minds? Or would it be better to get back on the park immediately? It would be a fortnight before we were to play again.

Well done lads.....

As luck would have it, our next game was also against Rangers. Despite the narrow margin of this second defeat (3-2) everyone knew that we had been well beaten. But there were signs of a recovery. Our late, late fight back restored a bit of pride. It reminded the team of what was possible and just as important, it avoided serious damage to our goal difference.

Many thought that the game in Aberdeen would be critical to our top six ambitions. A defeat would give hope to the chasing pack and do nothing to lift the spirits but we gave them nothing.

It says plenty about the spirit in the camp that, despite the loss of Corrigan and O’Donnell and Leitch too (for the second half) that we came away with an emphatic, well deserved victory. It was also encouraging to see Kerr have a decent forty five minutes for the first team.

It was great to see the joy and delight on the faces of the players and fans as the celebrations unfolded at Pittodrie. Butcher, in particular, relished the occasion. Afterwards he said, “It was a smashing all round team performance”.

Although we tend to think of any win in the Granite City as a prize, it could well be that this win was only put into second place by the famous game which kicked off our winning cup run in season 90/91.

Let’s hope that we get the result we need on Tuesday.