Vale and Rovers gear up for season

David O'Leary • Published 12 Aug 2010 09:30 0 Comments

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PEEBLESSHIRE’S two East of Scotland League sides kick-off their respective campaigns this Saturday and both teams will be hoping for a solid start to the season after a summer of management changes.

Premier Division new boys Vale replaced last season’s promotion winning manager Rab Paget with Stewart Churchill (pictured right) at the start of the summer.

And Peebles Rovers followed suit two weeks ago replacing Rab Linton, who walked out, with one time Vale boss Stuart Robertson.

On Saturday at 2.30pm, Stewart Churchill’s men face off against Heriot Watt University at Victoria Park while in the First Division Rovers travel to Edinburgh to play Leith Athletic.

Vale boss Churchill will be hoping that it’s the side which played valiantly in a 3-1 defeat to a Hib’s XI, which contained several first teamers, that turns up and not the one which received a 5-0 hiding from amateur neighbours Leithen Rovers.

He said: “It’s been a long pre-season and we’ve had a number of players away recently at weddings and stag-do’s. The Leithen Rovers result was disappointing but we put in a good performance two days later beating Berwick Rangers 2-0 away from home and we followed this up by playing some nice stuff against Hibs on Tuesday night.

“It was 1-1 until the 65th minute and their two goals didn’t come until I changed the back four with an eye on this Saturday.

“We’ll be missing Kerr Dodds for the opening few games due to a knee injury and we’ll also be without Aaron Somerville who is in talks with Newtowngrange Star. His leaving isn’t a done deal yet though and we’re after bringing in a fine striker in Steven Radzynski if he does leave anyway.”

Rovers meanwhile face Leith Athletic without their new manager Stuart Robertson, who is away on holiday until Sunday. Assistant player/manager Kevin Martin will marshal the Whitestone Park troops instead.

After the the upheaval and largely forgettable football of the past number of seasons Rovers chairman Colin MacDonald remains upbeat about the coming season.

He said: “Stuart and Kevin are a good team and I have a lot of faith in them. We’ve had several players down over the past ten days and a good number of them have done very well. The new lads are certainly an improvement on some of the players we’ve had over the past few seasons.

“There’s now competition for places and I feel we have a squad that can really take the club forward.”

Both clubs with also tog out for the second round of games next Wednesday night at 7pm, Vale play host to Selkirk while Peebles are on their travels again to Easthouses Lily.

This article appeared in Peeblesshire News 13 Aug 10

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