Chris Hopes to Build on Winning Start
The Bully Wee defeated Stirling Albion on Saturday and Chris Smith, voted as Man of the Match by supporters, believes it was the perfect start to the club’s Ladbrokes League Two campaign.
The central defender moved to Broadwood from Forthbank in the summer and he revealed that beating his old club and a team who are expected to challenge at the top of the league made the victory all the sweeter.
The 26-year-old spoke to the official website and said: “Our main concern this season is the league so it was good to get off to a winning start, especially as it was against my old team!
“Stirling have just come down so you would expect them to be tipped as favourites. I would imagine they will be up there at the end of the season so it is always nice to go and beat one of the favourites.
“However, it doesn’t matter who you are playing, it is always important to get off to a good start. It always takes the first four or five league games before people start to settle down and get into a rhythm, so it is good to get points on the board early rather than try to play catch up with teams.”
‘Junior’, as he is known, joined Clyde after spending the majority of his career in the second and third tiers of Scottish football with Morton, Dumbarton, Ayr and Falkirk but he insists he didn’t think twice about the move to Broadwood when he was told of the club’s ambition.
Smith explained: “When I spoke to the gaffer I was sold on the way he was wanting to go about things and the way the club is looking to go forward – that made my mind up because you want to be at a club whose ambition is promotion and to get out of the league they are in.
“I feel that we have got the coaching team and the players to go and get promotion.
“This league can often be about who battles the hardest and if we match the other teams’ effort we should win games, because we do have good players. First and foremost we need to put the work in but if we do that I have no concerns. I don’t see any team bullying us without a fight.”
This weekend, The Bully Wee face a Queen’s Park side who narrowly missed out on promotion through the Play-Offs last season and Smith is expecting a tough 90 minutes:-
“We got off to a good start at the weekend but Queen’s Park nearly went up last year so we couldn’t really have been given a harder start to the league.
“It is good for us to get into the hard games right away as we go into it knowing we need to be right up for it, so maybe the way the fixtures came out was a good thing.”
Chris concluded by commenting on the support from the stands, evident in the opening matches so far:-
“During the Stirling game we really noticed the fans, they got behind us and it is always good to have the supporters’ backing like that. It is up to us to keep putting the performances in and giving the fans something to come back for.
“If the supporters are doing their bit, we will definitely do our bit to give them something to cheer about and hopefully it brings some other supporters back as well.”