Raith Rovers’ Ryan Conroy would love to add another goal to his tally at Livingston and move clear in the race to be the club’s top scorer in the Championship this term.
But the in-form winger doesn’t particularly care who nets for the Kirkcaldy outfit this afternoon, as long as they head back east with all three points.
Conroy’s sixth league strike of the season last Friday night wasn’t enough to prevent Rangers from ending Rovers’ seven-game unbeaten streak, but the former Dundee star reckons a win over Livi today could spark another decent run of results.
“We were pretty disappointed not to win at the end of the day last week but I’ve scored quite a few goals now and hopefully I can keep that going,” he told Courier Sport.
“I’m happy with the way I’m playing just now.
“I think the more goals you score the more confidence you get going into every game, and I’m always happy to get chances.
“When I first came I maybe wasn’t 100% fit because I didn’t have much of a pre-season under my belt, but maybe now I’m at full fitness and I think this is probably the best I’ve played since signing.
“I think we always knew that the unbeaten run would come to an end and of course we didn’t want it to come to an end against Rangers.
“But we’ve got confidence that we can go on another run like that and hopefully it starts this weekend.
“There’s not a lot of pressure on us just now because everybody is talking about Queen of the South and Falkirk for that fourth place.
“But we can hopefully sneak up there and put them under pressure.
“Everybody beats everybody in this league and we’ve got to hope that we can pick up a few points, they drop a few and then we’ve still got to play them between now and the end of the season.
“If we can beat Queen of the South twice then that will put a bit of pressure on them, so it’s a good challenge for us.”
Conroy, who sits level with striker Christian Nade on six a-piece for the league season, could steal a march on his team-mate today as Nade misses out through suspension alongside the injured Calum Elliot.
And he joked: “I think Christian will be telling the boys not set me up!
“But seriously, I think he’ll just be happy if we get the three points.
“I try not to think about it because he’s a striker, but I’m happy enough to set up him and I’m sure he’d be happy enough to set me up.
“But it’s good that we’ve got goals coming from everywhere on the pitch.
“It happens in every team because if the strikers aren’t scoring you need other boys to chip in with goals and that can only be good for the team.”
Revenge is very much on the minds of most of the Raith players after they suffered a 5-1 humiliation at home when the teams last met, and Conroy is no different.
“I think we went down to 10 men pretty early in the last game we played against them but still, to lose 5-1 to anybody definitely sticks in your mind,” he continued.
“I think they’ll know that they beat us 5-1 last time so they’ll be fairly confident, but we know we’re more than capable of turning them over.
“I’ve played against them a good few times and it’s always a hard place to go.
“Although we beat them through there at the start of the season it was a hard game.
“We felt fairly comfortable near the end but Livingston are a hard team to play against.
“When we went down to 10 men at Stark’s they punished us for that so we’re definitely not going to underestimate them.”
Boss Grant Murray has already warned his side not to look ahead to next week’s all-important Scottish Cup tie in Inverness, although Conroy reckons the players will have to perform this weekend to guarantee themselves a starting jersey in seven days time.
He concluded: “We’re obviously looking forward to that but we need to get the league out of the way first.
“I think you go into every game not wanting to be dropped the following week but even more so this week because it’s the Scottish Cup next week.
“There’s a lot at stake in that game because if we win it you go to Hampden, but I think we’re all concentrating on Livingston at the moment.”