Two New Faces in squad for Dumbarton

‘Loons’ manager Stuart Malcolm has added two new faces to his playing staff over the past 24 hours and both are in the squad that will make the trip to face Dumbarton as the second half of the SPFL League One campaign gets underway some ten weeks after football at that level was brought to shuddering halt due to the pandemic.

Tomorrow will also see the commencement of a very tricky and busy period of fixtures for all clubs in the bottom two tiers of the game in Scotland, in fact probably the busiest on record.

Even those who can remember and sadly the writer is one of them the good old days when we played three games in four or five days over the New Year period will never recall such an intense fixture list as clubs will now face over an initial 31 day period.

For that very reason especially with the news that Jack MacKenzie and Florent Hoti will not now be returning from Aberdeen and Dundee United, having established themselves in recent weeks in their respective first-team matchday squads, the manager is still keen to add another couple of new faces in the week ahead to bolster squad numbers.

Back to this week’s signings and it is firstly a welcome to experienced midfield player Graeme Holmes who has joined the Athies until the end of May.

Graeme in fact began his senior career with Dundee United back in 2003, Dumbarton his second ‘port of call’ although he will be best remembered by the Station Park support for his appearances in the ‘toonie’ during a seven-year stint with Alloa Athletic.

The other newcomer is 19-year-old Jordan Northcott another midfield player who has arrived on a temporary transfer for the remainder of the season from St. Johnstone.   Jordan has been training at Station Park over the past week and came on as a substitute in last week’s friendly with Elgin City.

All the other new faces signed during ‘lockdown’ are in the pool for the clash with Jim Duffy’s team, the sides having fought out a 0-0 draw at Station Park on October 17^th, the start date for what was at that time a truncated league season of 27 games now cut by five all going to plan.