STEVIE Lawless grew up dreaming of starring at Ibrox, but his two appearances at the stadium to date for Partick Thistle have been the stuff of nightmares.
Lawless was a Rangers fan as a boy, but there is no questioning where his loyalties lie now, as anyone who has witnessed his performances against the Light Blues at Firhill will testify.
By his own admission though, he hasn’t been able to reproduce that sort of form in front of 50,000 fans at Ibrox, and he is desperate to settle that score on Saturday.
“It’s going to be difficult, but these are the big games you want to play in when you are growing up and you want to test yourself,” said Lawless.
“It’s obviously brilliant going there, I grew up a Rangers fan. But I think if you ask the Thistle fans, I’ve played there twice and haven’t turned up twice!
“It’s nothing to do with Rangers, I just had two bad games there, and I seem to play well against them every time we’re at home.
“It’s definitely something I need to rectify as well. It’s the stadium I grew up wanting to play at, and I haven’t done myself justice when I’ve gone there.
“I’ll be looking to put that right come the weekend, and hopefully we can put one over on them because I’d love to get a victory at Ibrox.
“Possibly we would have preferred Pedro Caixinha still to be there, but you can look at it both ways. When a new manager comes in it can give them a lift and give them a point to prove.
“Hopefully we can use it to our advantage. They went a goal behind at the weekend and managed to fight back, but if we can go ahead and get the fans on their back at Ibrox, we’ll see how they react to that.”
To be fair to Lawless, the Thistle side as a whole haven’t really done themselves justice when making the short trip to Govan of late, and he sees no reason for that to be the case, believing they are more than a match for Rangers.
“Every time we’ve played them at home we’ve given them a really good game, and we feel a little hard done by that we haven’t taken more from the matches,” he said.
“They had two last-minute goals last year, and then the two draws this year, so we definitely know we can match them, it’s just about trying to take that into Ibrox.
“For some reason, we just don’t put in the performances there that we know we can against them.
“We’ll be looking to rectify that and hopefully we can get the result.”
Lawless is likely to again be deployed in the left wing-back position, a move that was enforced through injuries, but one in which he has flourished over the last few games.
“I probably wouldn’t use the word ‘enjoy’ when it comes to me playing wing-back, but it’s been decent enough,” he said.
“As long as I’m playing, I’m happy. I would obviously prefer to be playing much higher up the park, but even when I am up there I do a bit of defending.
“I probably shouldn’t say what came into my mind initially when the manager asked me to do it, because I’d played there once before and we got beat 6-0 by Aberdeen!
“I just said ‘aye, no problem’, thinking it would probably just to get us through to half-time.
“It’s worked so far, but I’m sure if you ask the gaffer, he’ll be taking it a game at a time.”
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