Raith Rovers manager Neill Collins looking forward to going up against old club Queen’s Park for first time ever

The Kirkcaldy club host the Spiders at Stark’s Park this Saturday, October 19, for what will be both’s ninth game of the new William Hill Championship season, with kick-off at 3pm.

Collins’ current club and his first employers have enjoyed differing fortunes over the course of their eight league games to date, leaving the Fifers sitting third from bottom, with two wins and seven points to their name, and Queen’s fourth, with twice as many victories and points.

Queen’s manager Callum Davidson, a former team-mate of Collins at Preston North End from 2009 to 2010, heads east in charge of a team unbeaten in six games in all competitions, their last loss being by 3-0 away to Partick Thistle in the league at the end of August.

Raith, on the other hand, have only won one of their last seven competitive fixtures, a 1-0 home victory over table-toppers Falkirk at the end of last month, but Collins is hoping to turn the tables on his old club this weekend.

“I’m very much looking forward to it,” said the South Ayrshire-born 41-year-old.

“I’m looking forward to it first and foremost because I want to see our team go out and perform and seize an opportunity to get three points, but it’s obviously also nice to play against a club that I’ve got very fond memories of.”

This weekend’s game will be Collins’ first against Queen’s since he left them, after playing there for a year at centre-back, for Dumbarton in 2002 as, after leaving the Sons in 2004, his career took him south of the border to the likes of Sunderland, Hartlepool United, Sheffield United, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Leeds United and, eventually, overseas to the USA’s Tampa Bay Rowdies, only bringing him back to his homeland at the start of September to succeed Ian Murray at Raith.

“Funnily enough, I’ve never played against Queen’s Park since,” he said.

“The reason that I ended up going from Queen’s Park to Dumbarton was a game the clubs played against each other in pre-season and Dumbarton signed me afterwards, but I never actually went on to face them again.

“This will be the first time that I’ve ever faced Queen’s Park.”

Those two decades apart don’t mean Collins won’t be seeing any familiar faces tomorrow, though, as he’s a former colleague of their director of football, Darren O’Donnell, as well as Davidson.

“There are people I know there,” he said. “Their director of football, funnily enough, is someone I played with in under-16 teams – that’s amazing, isn’t it? – and Callum Davidson’s an old team-mate from my time at Preston, so there are still a few connections there,” he explained.