Raith Rovers: Hero Kieran Mitchell jokes that his left footed laveller at Partick should have counted as double goal!

The 20-year-old Fife-born winger netted his first goal for Raith to earn a 2-2 draw in the Championship opener, which had earlier seen Ian Murray’s team go 2-0 down to strikes by Jack McMillan and Aidan Fitzpatrick before rescuing a point thanks to Dylan Easton’s deflected effort on 83 minutes before Mitchell’s late leveller.

“Obviously I’m delighted to get my first goal,” Mitchell told RaithTV. “It’s been a long time coming but I’m really happy.

"Ethan Ross has done brilliant, he does what he does taking on players and drives into the box.

"I saw everybody flooding in so I thought I would just pull out.

"My positioning was good, the ball comes to me and I kept my head down and thankfully the ball went into the back of the net.

"It was my left foot as well so I don’t know if I can take that as a double goal but I’ll take it!

"It was obviously a big point today. The boys fought throughout the whole game.

"We were definitely disappointed at half-time going in down.

"But look I don’t think we deserved it.

"Muzza (Raith defender Euan Murray) had a chance in the first couple of seconds, I thought we started the game very well and we were gutted on the bench that we did concede straight after it.

"But I think the last couple of games we have started the game phenomenally and if we keep on doing that we will score early on and we will control games a lot easier this season.

"The boys have shown before that we can go goals down and come back into it and we did that again.”

Mitchell, who came on as an 80th-minute substitute for Scott McGill in Maryhill, lauded the quality within the Raith squad this season.

"The good thing is that everybody on the bench knows their job,” he added.

"When they go on everybody wants to fight for the team. It’s not as if we’re going on just for numbers.

"Some boys have obviously put a great effort in and are a wee bit tired, left everything on the pitch.

"So then we then go: ‘Right, it’s our turn to show them what we can do’, get on and get a chance.

"The squad has obviously got injuries here and there but everybody’s fighting to get back in and we’ve got a great chance.”

Mitchell said he enjoys having a great affinity with Raith fans, adding: “I’ve definitely got a connection with the fans.

"The support here has been brilliant since the day I first came in. At away games they’re singing all the time.

"At 2-0 down they were still singing, still outsinging Partick Thistle as well.”

Mitchell, who wants to establish himself as a starter, said that pace is a great asset of his game, although he has been working on improving his ability to take more goalscoring chances, which he has been working on and proved that at Thistle.