Euan Murray has been a constant in Raith Rovers’ clean sheets this season – and hopes promotion can be built on that sound defensive foundation.
The centre-half has played in every one of the shut-outs earned by the Stark’s Park side, who racked up a third in a row against Morton last weekend.
Other than goalkeeper Kevin Dabrowski, no-one else has featured in all 11 they have managed across the campaign.
And, with seven in their last 11 games, the new-found solidity looks to have come at the ideal time.
The Kirkcaldy men are preparing to see out the regular campaign against Arbroath on Friday night before the big build-up to their play-off semi-final against either Airdrie or Partick Thistle.
Murray said: “It’s not really something I actually thought about until folk started messaging me.
“It’s something we take great pride in, not just myself but all of us at the club, from the staff to every player that goes on the pitch. It is a team effort.
“To have been there in every one of the clean sheets this season is really, really pleasing.
“It has come together of late. Earlier on in the season, we were scoring goals for fun – but we were probably a wee bit more open on the counter-attack and teams were punishing us.
Murray: ‘It’s been pleasing’
“A lot of the time we were still defending well for big periods in games; it was fine margins were going against us.
“It was just about fine-tuning those fine margins, and I feel like we’ve done that of late.
“It’s been pleasing, but we obviously are now looking to carry that on going into the play-offs.”
Manager Ian Murray expects the play-offs to be tight affairs. Remarkably, Raith Rovers have only won once and lost twice by more than one goal across the entire league campaign.
Defender Murray added: “It’s about big moments that can go your way or go against you.
“As long as we keep that solidity and structure, and that desire not to concede, we’ll be okay.
“If we can carry that on, with the players we’ve got at the other end of the park, we’ll stand as good a chance as anybody.”
A run of five consecutive defeats early in 2024 helped focus the minds of staff and players at Raith.
With two weeks to prepare for the visit of Dundee United in mid-February, Murray admits there was a change of tack.
But there has also been a shortage of goals in recent weeks – they have themselves drawn a blank in four of the last seven games and scored just four times in that period.
‘A bit gung-ho’
Against that backdrop, the approach is always evolving.
He continued: “Our biggest strength all season has been getting our good attacking players on the ball as high up the park and as quickly as we can, and letting them go and do their magic.
“But we were becoming a bit gung-ho and from the first whistle we were going to try to score goals every time we had the ball.
“Teams had maybe sussed us out a bit and were sitting in and playing on the counter-attack against us when we were open.
“We had a chat about it going into that Dundee United game.
“That’s another thing that the manager and the staff and the boys are due credit for – we’ve been adaptable.
“That’s when we started looking like having a solid base again.
“But, even then, it’s changed again from that game, maybe just because we’ve not scored as many goals as we would have liked.
“So, we’ve looked at it and thought, ‘what can we do now to get the goals going again’.”
