West of Scotland League extension will ease fixtures backlog, says Shotts boss

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Shotts boss John McKeown is relieved that the West of Scotland League will extent the First Division season until the end of May, as it gives him less of a backlog.The Hannah Park club’s clash at Neilston fell foul of a frozen pitch on Saturday, adding to a list of midweek dates they will have between now and the end of this season.But McKeown says it could have been a lot worse.He said: “It’s another one for us to catch up on, unfortunately, but we did see that the league is going to be extended until the end of May, so that’s not so bad.“It’s not as many midweek games as we maybe presumed.“Shotts was, unbelievably, playable, so we were quite hopeful on Saturday.“But Barrhead is quite high up and far out the way as well, so they checked it on Saturday morning and it was too hard.“It might have been ready for kick-off time, but you’ve got to make the call pretty early.“There are a lot of games for teams to catch up on, it has just been one of those winters.“We just need to focus on one game at a time for us, and keep the boys ticking over, so we were in training on Saturday morning.”McKeown is looking for his side’s form to pick up and had hoped to get back on track at Neilston, but his attention now turns to the visit of Cumbernauld United this weekend, under new gaffer Jamie Nesbitt.He said: “It’s at home and it will be another tough one, because they’re down there fighting for their lives, same as us.“They’ve also got a new management team in, but we need to be focused and try to do the business.“They beat us in the league and we beat them in ‘The Scottish’, so we need to try and pick up our home form of late – our form in total needs to pick up.“We’ve had quite a lot of injuries and brought in four new players, so we