First team football makes a return to Palmerston tomorrow evening, as we welcome League Two side Montrose for a Scottish Cup Third Round Replay.  The two sides fought out a goal-less draw up at Links Park on Saturday and now go head to head for the right to play Partick Thistle in the next round.

Looking ahead to the replay, Manager Gary Naysmith said "I said after the game on Saturday that I thought a draw was a fair result from a somewhat scrappy game and having reviewed the 90 minutes, I still stand by that. Neither side did quite enough to merit winning the game and therefore we go again. We made a few bad decisions when we had the ball on Saturday and as time gets on in those games you can get a wee bit anxious because you know that one error or one lapse in concentration can see you knocked out of the Cup.

For ourselves it was a second consecutive 0-0 draw in a cup competition, we are now unbeaten in eight games in regulation time and what has really pleased me is that we have had five clean sheets in those eight games. 

We will be tested again tomorrow, I have no doubt about that. Montrose are full of confidence at the moment and have only been beaten in two of their dozen league matches so far.

We’ve got a Tuesday/ Saturday schedule for the next two weeks now but if you want to be successful then a busy fixture list is part and parcel of that. We want to progress as far as we can in every competition we enter but obviously this is the big one for teams like us. We went all the way to the final in 2008 so we need to approach the competition thinking we can do so again. Obviously you need a wee bit of luck with the draw along the way but you also need to be on top of your game when you play well organised football teams like Montrose.

I have told the players we will have to better than we were on Saturday to get through to the next round.

The fans turned up in numbers again on Saturday, the amount of away games and distances involved in recent weeks must have put a real strain on the purse strings for everyone of them, so we can't thank them enough for their backing. I'm sure they'll be out again for the replay and I hope they can roar us on to victory.

With what's been a grueling schedule so far and what's ahead, we will assess the squad, but we will again be without Jason Kerr and Chris Kane who are on loan from St Johnstone and are therefore unavailable for selection and the injured Dan Carmichael.

The game at Palmerston kicks off at 7.45 pm