DALRY Thistle boss Chris Wilson said his side are aiming for promotion after overcoming a shaky start to the season.
The Merksworth Park side opened their campaign with a pair of losses, first away to Ardeer Thistle and then at home to Glasgow Perthshire.
But they steadied the ship at the weekend, defeating a strong Finnart outfit away from home.
Wilson admits it has been a difficult start to the season, with his side facing challenges even at this early stage.
He explained: “I’ve got five missing who probably would have started in the first game had they been available.
“That’s a lot of players to take out any team, especially at this level. When you’ve not got the budget of some of the other teams who can go out and buy players the way we can’t – it’s very difficult.
“I think we just didn’t play well the first two games. We played alright against Perthshire but we lost really poor goals.
“Against Ardeer I thought we were comfortable first ten, and then the roof just fell in and we lost goals at really bad times.
“I think Saturday was much better, so fingers crossed that’s us turned a corner.”
Saturday's result was an impressive against a Finnart side who have been tipped for a promotion charge in the West of Scotland Football League (WoSFL) Third Division this season.
Wilson hopes his side will now take confidence from that heading into the coming weeks.
He commented: “I think Finnart will be one of the teams to beat this season. I don’t think many teams will go there and get a result.
“We’re delighted with it and I think it will maybe give the boys that lift to show we can go and compete with the best teams in this league.
“That is the standard now we need to hit to win games in this division.
“We’ve always said that, through pre-season that was always the mantra – we’re going up to try and compete and try and get promotion."
And while the boss was disappointed with the club's start to the season, he said it is pleasing to see his players react well to the setback.
Wilson added: “I think the players were a bit shell-shocked after the first two games. We had a lot of possession, but we couldn’t really convert it, and we lost bad goals.
“The players deserve enormous credit for going there with the right attitude and giving the performance they gave us.
“Now we’ve got a week to reset and get in because it’s difficult at this time of year because you’re just constantly getting games, games, games.
“You don’t have time to work on a lot of things or get players up to fitness because you don’t have those training sessions.
“We’re looking forward to a week of calmness, working on a few things and letting a few boys rest up – then hopefully we go again.”
And with the league incredibly tight already, with no side getting maintaining a perfect record through three games, Wilson feels there is no reason his side cannot battle back and be amongst the challengers.
He continued: “The good thing is that everybody is dropping points, no one is sitting with nine points from nine – it’s not as if we’re trailing by six points, it’s not damage that we can’t fix.
“I think there were two teams last year we didn’t take points off of, and one of them went and won it. We knew we weren’t far away.
“We retained what we had to retain, we cleared out what we had to clear our and we’ve brought in some really good players that I think have made us better.
“That natural view on it is we were mid-table (last season) but we were a few points away from top six last season, we’ve strengthened so we have to go beyond that and push into the top three.”
Next up for Dalry is a trip to face Kilsyth Athletic on Saturday, August 10, with kick off at 2pm.
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