TO the victor go the spoils. In stark contrast the losers, at least some of them, get to go on the dole.
Ross County sit bottom of the Premiership with 27 points, a goal difference of minus 21 and three games remaining. Above them by two points is Partick Thistle on a grand total of minus 30.
These two meet at Firhill this evening and just to add more tension to the night, if that were at all possible, third bottom Dundee and Hamilton, one place better off ,play one another on Saturday afternoon.
It’s exciting but hugely painful for the club which goes down because, as Isaac Newton almost said, it doesn’t mean they will get back up.
A win for Thistle leaves County on the cusp of relegation to the Championship, leaving the other three fighting out to finish above eleventh and therefore avoiding the play-off.
In such circumstances, the teams who emerge to safety tend to be the ones which manage to control their nerves and somehow ignore the serious situation to at least attempt to play football. This is not for faint hearts.
Relegation means a cutting of playing budgets, jobs are at risk, wages go down, promising kids perhaps having to be let go. In conclusion, it’s not very good.
“This is possibly the biggest game I’ve had at this club,” said Alan Archibald, the Thistle manager, who is closing in 650 appearances as boss and player.
It’s the enormity of it, this is a huge game for both clubs and very similar to the last one when we went up there. We were just ahead of them, had the chance to open up a gap, they could leapfrog us, and it went their way.
“But you can enjoy these games. There is a big crowd and you feel the atmosphere. Everyone wants to play in big games, which this certainly is albeit for the wrong reasons, but it is still a huge occasion.
“It is important we have one or two who have been there before, who can calm the lads down. It’s also so important to play your own game and don’t try to do something unnatural to you.
“Guys such as Martin Woods, Chris Erskine and Kris Doolan are going to be vital. They have seen it all before, and I hope the relay this back to the others. They are more experienced in terms of age and the amount of games played, but the likes of Stevie Lawless has been though big games for us when we were going for promotion or fighting relegation.”
“I do think nerves play their part. You can see that in games when players are trying to pass the ball and the quality isn’t there because there’s so much at stake.
“I spoke to the players about that. There will be nervousness, there is going to be tension, and it’s important to settle, pass the ball, play your own game and put the nerves to bed.”
Steven Ferguson, Ross County’s co-manager, agreed with his counterpart. Right now. it’s more about bottle than beautiful football.
“We always said it was never going to be pretty at this stage of the season, and so it has proved,” he said. “These haven’t been games for the purist, we understand that. But it’s important the players deal with the situation with calm heads among the chaos.
“It is easy to get caught up in the scrap and the fight, but what we need is that calm head and composure in the final third of the pitch, in picking the right pass and making the right decisions.
“We are looking forward to the game – it can’t come around quickly enough.”
Thistle supporters feared the worst when their side lost 4-0 at Dingwall the last time these two said hello. It was an awful night for the Maryhill men, their worst for a few years, but a squad which seemed bereft of spirit have managed to pick up some points to take them back above the Highlanders.
“We had a couple of meetings after that,” revealed Archibald. “It all went wrong up there, we know that, and we know where we went wrong in terms of performance.
“We spoke about it, there was a chance to reflect on the game, and the split gave is a clean break and it gave us a chance to get a positive result, which we managed against Hamilton.
“We haven’t forgotten about that night by any manner of means.”
Managers, whose own jobs could be on the line, find out things about their players on such nights. Nobody can hide, not a single passenger is allowed.
And Archibald and Ferguson are looking forward to it...masochists.
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