Pre-season delay won’t affect Raith Rovers says boss McGlynn

The Stark’s Park side were due to start back on Monday before a delay of a week was enforced following a breach of lockdown guidelines from Aberdeen and Celtic players was ordered by the SPFL and SFA.

However, manager McGlynn insists he is not too concerned with waiting another few days.

“First and foremost this is about the health and wellbeing of every individual in the country,” he says, “that is paramount.

“If the SPFL, the SFA and the Joint Response Group feel that is the best way to act because of the Aberdeen and Celtic situations, we just have to accept it.

“From our point of view, we were starting back training in plenty of time to be ready for the new season. 

“Of course, everyone is desperate to get back, from the backroom staff to every single player, so it’s a little bit of a disruption, but it’s not major.

“We might to speed things up a little bit because of losing this week, so we need to very careful that we don’t pick up injuries, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not the end of the world.  

“We’ve been away from football for a long time. Another week’s not going to kill us.”

Whilst McGlynn waits patiently to get back on the training ground, the Betfred Cup schedule was announced, which sees Rovers kick off the season proper with a derby match against East Fife on October 10 at Stark’s Park.

McGlynn, who says he is still actively seeking a new striker to add to his squad, called Rovers’ Group A “very exciting”

“There’s two Fife derbies in there with East Fife and Cowdenbeath, we’ve got Inverness who we are going to be playing the Challenge Cup Final at some point and obviously Hearts.

“It’s a great mix and it’s going to set us up really well for the start of the league season.

“We know East Fife very well from the last few seasons being in League One together and they did very well in the Betfred Cup last season, so we need to take that into account.

“Like the actual league itself, Hearts are going to be the big favourites to get through.

“But in as much as they’ve been back training – though it has been stalled – with a bit of luck we will catch them early on in the season and maybe cause an upset.

“I think everyone will anticipate getting a hard game against them, particularly at Tynecastle, so it would be nice if, by that time on the 13th of October, we had a big crowd in there even though the game is live on television.

“It may not be, it may be behind closed doors, and that will have a big effect at Tynecastle where the atmosphere is usually electric.

“We’re looking forward to it and it’s exciting.”

He added: “We’re at home for our first game and we’re delighted not be travelling as much as we did at the start of last season!”