Who’ll be King of the Castles? Stirling bring university challenge to the Academy

Posted on Friday, August 16th, 2013

Spartans look to build on their undefeated start to the inaugural Lowland League season when they take on Stirling University at Ainslie Park on Saturday.

Stirling have made the perfect start to their campaign, defeating East Kilbride at home last Saturday, followed by a midweek win on the road at Preston.

Speaking ahead of the game, Spartans Manager Dougie Samuel said, “We weren’t able to beat Stirling at Ainslie Park last season, so we’d love to put that right at the first time of asking.

“This will be a tough game – make no mistakes about it.  Stirling are a full time side with a full time coach and it’s always a hard shift when you play them.”

With this historic season now up and running, the Gaffer was excited by how it’s worked out so far.  “The league is going to be very competitive.  It’s definitely destined to be a tight affair and I think everybody will be taking points of each other along the way.

“I think that’s a healthy position for the league to be in.  The last thing we need is for someone to be running away with it, so there are going to be tough, challenging games week in week out and that can not only improve players as players, but also improve us as coaches as well as we try and find solutions to hopefully deliver 3 points on a Saturday.”

The start of the season sees a host of challenging fixtures in the opening few weeks of the Spartans calendar.  Sammy joked, “We’ve got the Manchester United start this season, as we have Whitehill in a couple of weeks as well, so the fixture secretary certainly wasn’t very kind to us! 

“However, having said that, players want to play in big games and Stirling University at home is certainly a big game.”

The game kicks off at 3pm.  Admission is £5 / £3 and U/12s are Free.