Kane Confident As The Pars Look To Hamilton

Following on from what felt like another long summer break, Dunfermline Athletic are now beginning to really motor though their 2024/25 Championship fixture list, but sadly for fans of  The Pars  so far, we are still awaiting our first victory (and points) of the campaign.

Opening defeats to both Livingston, and most recently Falkirk, were certainly not what anyone had hoped for as we welcomed the new season in, but with a more lengthy gap now until the coming clash with Hamilton Academical, it gives 40 year old gaffer James McPake a bit longer to focus in on training and get the players properly knuckled down so we can get the year up and running properly.

With a short break in the fixture list, some fans may choose to occupy their time with the popular Casino based games that you can easily  play online these days, but it certainly will not be too long before the football returns and for any Canadian based fans, they will naturally be keeping a close eye on 13 capped midfielder David Wotherspoon after he agreed a deal with us over the summer and continues to find his feet in the team.

Given the history, Falkirk is a bitter pill for everyone to swallow, and speaking to the media after the game had finished McPake admitted it was a `sore one` as it was also his first defeat to them since he took the job on, but he knew that ultimately they were worthy winners on the day.

After a much poorer first half, he did see plenty of things in the second half that he felt we could now build on moving forward, but even then he had to concede we did not really cause them any great problems in their box, and that is something that needed to significantly improve.

With the summer transfer window still open, there could be further movement in the market from him - although that is far from guaranteed given the financial balancing that is obviously at play - as although he commented that he was not actually `worried` about the group he has available to him, he did admit that the squad was not `big enough` and he certainly did not feel it had the depth necessary to really be challenging at the top of the table, as making it to the Premier League is obviously everyone`s ultimate aim.

After a mixed summer, Chris Kane did get some minutes under his belt in the match having come on as a second half substitute, but McPake revealed that if he can really pick up his match sharpness during this short break, he could be in contention for a starting spot for the Hamilton clash, as there is definitely optimism surrounding Kane`s ability to have a telling impact on our future results when he is truly back up to full speed - we saw as much during his loan spell last year with his goals to games return.

As for the 29 year old himself having made his return from his ankle problems, whilst he acknowledged that the result was a poor one from our point of view, he was naturally just happy to have got back onto the pitch to help add to his fitness levels.

It may have only been a shorter substitute appearance, but having missed all of our pre season warm up matches, and then four of our competitive games following on from his initial appearance as a substitute in the Premier Sports Cup victory over The Spartans, so he viewed the run out as a bit of a milestone for him, as he knew it had been a very frustrating couple of weeks as he has not been able to `hit the ground running` in the way he wanted to having made the decision to make the switch to East End Park.

All eyes to Hamilton now then, and hopefully we will be up and running.

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