The home games are coming thick and fast this month, with another on Saturday as Dumbarton pay their first visit of the season to Palmerston. This SPFL Championship game kicks off at the usual time of 3pm. Dont miss this one, though, as its nearly a month before our next home game on the 16th September.
Dumbarton currently sit on 2 points after drawing their first two games, 0-0 with Morton on the opening day and 1-1 with Falkirk last weekend. With the Falkirk goal coming from a penalty, the Sons have yet to concede from open play in the league.
Part of the reason for that is, ex Queens player, Andy Dowie who signed for Dumbarton in the summer after leaving Palmerston. Hes already formed a partnership in the centre of defence with, ex Alloa, Brechin and Raith player, Dougie Hill, which Gary Naysmith hopes to break through this weekend :
"I was really pleased with the way we performed on Tuesday against Airdrie, I thought we were thoroughly professional and after a nervy opening ten minutes we found our feet and had the game wrapped up by half-time. We didn't play as well in the second half but we are comfortably through and now face a trip to Berwick Rangers, which will be another tricky tie. We will have to give the same level of performance to make sure that we continue to progress.
We have challenged the players to give us goals from all over the park this season, so to have three defenders score on Tuesday on the back of Callum Fordyce scoring at Tannadice last week was very pleasing. We've scored nine goals in three games and none of them have been from Stephen Dobbie!
This weekend we play Dumbarton, I have a lot of respect and admiration for their manager, Stevie Aitken. He has done a fantastic job at Dumbarton and of course Stranraer before that, he always recruits well and always gets the best out of his players.
I watched them on Wednesday against a young Rangers side, so we know that they'll be well organised and we'll face a difficult challenge, but it's another home game for us and we want another positive result to build on the two performances that we've had against Brechin and Airdrie at Palmerston and of course last week against Dundee United.
As I said after the game on Tuesday, I want the team to score goals and entertain so we should have a full squad to choose from and we'll go out to attack."
As well as Dowie there are a number of players in both squads who have turned out for both clubs. Kyle Hutton and Craig Barr both joined the Sons in the summer and Alan Martin, Chris Kane, Andy Stirling and, of course, Stephen Dobbie have all turned out at the Rock in their careers.