Coming Up – A look ahead at the Spartans weekend

Posted on Wednesday, October 16th, 2024

This weekend sees The Spartans join clubs across the country taking part in the Show Racism the Red Card Scotland campaign.

The action kicks off at Ainslie Park on Friday night with a Friendly for our Under 20s against their Haddington Athletic counterparts in a change to the previously scheduled fixture. 7.45pm KO.

Following the withdrawal of Arniston Rangers u20s, this means a walkover into the 2nd Round of the Combined Challenge Cup.

Les Atkinson’s side remain top of the Lowland Development League after another 2-0 win, this time against East Fife – the third consecutive winning scoreline in a row and a sixth clean sheet in eight league games.

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Saturday afternoon sees The Spartans back at home after their recent away day escapades.

Heading to Ainslie Park are Elgin City for the latest instalment in our second season in the SPFL.

After a couple of challenging results, Douglas Samuel will be looking to rally his troops for a positive response in front of a noisy home support for what promises to be another engaging encounter against one of the league’s in-form teams.

The sides met in a midweek share of the spoils last time out a month ago, last weekend’s Malt and Hops Man of the Match Lewis Ritchie scoring his first goal for the club in the draw at Borough Briggs.

Tickets can be bought in advance from Fanbase: https://app.fanbaseclub.com/Fan/Tickets/SelectType?fixtureId=6060 and pay at the gate is also available for this 3.00pm KO.

SPFL 2 fixtures: Bonnyrigg Rose v Edinburgh City, Forfar Athletic v East Fife, Stirling Albion v Clyde & Stranraer v Peterhead 

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In the final senior Spartans game of the weekend, it’s a visit to New Douglas Park for Jack Beesley’s side who take on Celtic on SWPL 1 duty.

With the impending changes to the number of participants in next season’s SWPL 1, our largely rebuilt Women’s team have helped their position in the first round of fixtures by picking up nine points from games against the other bottom 5.

It’ll be another tough encounter against a Celtic side who have recently qualified for the Group stages of the Champions League.  

One positive from this is that all the SWPL 1 teams get a ‘solidarity payment’ for the Champions League and Celtic’s advancement in the tournament will boost the payment distributed at the end of the season.

Kick off at New Douglas Park is 2.00pm