Rob Roy out to end year on a high against Cumnock

Stewart Maxwell’s side are already guaranteed to end 2016 as table toppers after Saturday’s win at Arthurlie maintained their four-point lead.

Another win at Guy’s Meadow on Saturday in their final fixture of 2016 would be a terrific end to what has been a superb year for the club.

Maxwell is still taking nothing for granted and insists that getting past the survival points target is his first priority.

But admitted to detecting a growing desire and belief among his squad that they can go further.

Maxwell said: “When you’re in this position and you’re sitting top of the league, for every game the importance of it’s greater.

“Every win you achieve you’re closer to another goal and we’re probably just a couple of points away now from staying safe in the league.

“Once we get over that then obviously our goals change.

“If we can win on Saturday that would be our 19th win of the season, which is phenomenal.”

“The squad’s got a great belief in it, they’re a good bunch of boys, they believe in themselves.

“As much as I’ve always believed in them, and my coaching staff have, they’re all starting to believe now what they could achieve now if they keep it going.

“But we’ve got to stay grounded, keep training hard and stay focussed and we’ll see where it takes us.”

Maxwell was delighted with the way his side responded to the challenge at Arthurlie, a venue at which they haven’t done well in recent yearst.

He said: “They’ve been a bit of a bogey team since I came in as a manager. We seem to struggle at Barrhead the last few times we’ve been up so it was important to keep our run going and get that monkey off our back up there.”

“We worked on the threat they would pose. We thought it would be a physical game and it turned out to be that.

“The message to the players was ‘just go out and win the game’ - if you win it the way we like to play then great, if not we just need to be up for a battle and scrap it out.

“At times it wasn’t pretty, the park was a wee bit heavy and they’re a big, strong physical team. But we stood up to that and we grew as the game went on.

“I don’t think we played particularly well to start with but we grew into the game. We got the job done and at the end of the day if you want to be considered to go and challenge for anything, at tough venues like that you have to be able to go and box a game out and win it.

“We had a couple of other chances later on and maybe lacked a wee bit of a cutting edge to finish them off, but overall it was a clean sheet, three points and another win ticked off the list.”