Strathspey Thistle facing gruelling March in battle to avoid relegation risk
The Jags are facing a daunting March fixture list with nine games this month.
Highland League bosses notified the Seafield Park outfit earlier this week of their rearranged matches.
The season ends in mid-April this time out which meant that it was always going to be a hectic run in and Thistle had considered asking for an extension to the season.
But for now they will battle on.
They lost the first of their gruelling run-in at home on Wednesday night to Buckie Thistle 4-1 with Aviemore’s Josh Peters bagging four goals in 20 first half minutes.
The Grantown side has another very tough game tomorrow when they travel away to Banks O’ Dee.
“It is crazy,” said manager Ryan Esson. “We have nine games in a month.
“To be fair we could have had a game on April 2 so that gives us a week to recover.
“I think that they might have been waiting to find out the outcome of the Highland League Cup semi final last Saturday (Deveronvale 1 Brora Rangers 3).
“We have already suffered a couple of injuries having just had to play three games in a week.”
Paul Brindle’s calf injury is worse than expected and it is feared he will now be out for a couple of weeks.
Fellow forward Dan Whitehorn also has midweek work commitments to compound matters.
Dylan Lawrence has already been ruled out for the rest of the season with a hamstring injury.
Esson said: “We are struggling for strikers. Paul is likely to be unavailable for a couple of weeks but that could mean six matches because of our fixture list.”
The Jags boss revealed that the club is continuing to try and find a focal point for their attacks.
“We also have Kieran Duffty but I have to utilise everybody depending on the opposition,” said Esson.
“But we will keep going - we need to get wins on the board.”
