Match Preview: Ross County v Cowdenbeath

It's the final match of the league campaign on Saturday with Cowden making the long trip north to Dingwall needing an 11 goal winning margin to avoid the play-off place.

With the participation in the play-offs pretty much a formality, Jimmy Nicholl will take the opportunity to watch Brechin City against Ayr United, two potential play-off opponents, while scouts will take in the East Fife and Forfar games. In Nicholl's absence, assistant manager Colin Cameron will take the team at Dingwall.

"We wont be taking the game against Ross County lightly and It is our intention to go up there and win the game", said Nicholl.

"However, we wont be taking any unecessary risks so one or two players will be rested ahead of Wednesday night. That may give young guys, such as John Ferguson and Lewis Milne, the opportunity to take some part in the game

"The players will go into the play-offs with confidence. We have had an excellent final quarter to the season and a win on Saturday would give us 13 points from the final 9 games."

Visit Kick Talk radio to listen to more pre-match chat with Jimmy Nicholl.

It's the 4th meeting of the season between the 2 clubs with a win each and a draw - the opening day of the season saw us lose 2-0 before a 1-1 draw up in Dingwall (our goal coming from a Fitzpatrick own goal).  We managed to double our total of victories over Ross County in our history with a 2-1 win at Central Park a few weeks ago - goals from player of the year Mark Ramsay and Scott Linton secured 3 vital points at the time.

This date hasn't seen much action in recent years with only 1 game on this date in the past 15 years. In 2005 a Mark Millar goal secured a 1-0 win at Central Park over Queens Park for us to end the season in 3rd place just ahead of Queens.  In recent years our last league game of the season has seen us be rather inconsistent. Last season we lost 3-1 against Alloa (John Dempster with our goal in a game where we lost 3 goals in the last 16 minutes!) but the season before 2 late goals from John Ferguson saw us win 2-0 against East Stirlingshire. 2008 saw us strangely win 1-0 over Queens Park at Central Park but this time with a goal from Dennis McLaughlin.

You have to back to 2003 to the last time we drew a match on the last day of the league season - a 1-1 draw up at Forfar with Davie Mowat scoring our goal.

Our recent form has actually been quite impressive - in the last 8 games we've picked up 10 points which leaves us 6 in the form table.  With only 2 defeats in these 8 games the side are showing that they can compete at this level and should head into the play-offs with confidence. Ross County have picked up 13 points from this run and those 3 points more have proved to be enough to hang on to their league status.

Match of the day fact of the week:- Ross County are one of the lowest scorers in Scotland this season - with just 27 goals they sit 40th in the football league!  Cowden with 14 more goals sit tied 30th.  Incredibly County are 7th in Scotland in terms of defence with just 34 goals conceded while we sit 39th with 69 goals conceded!   

In addition, considering the fact our biggest ever win is 12-0 (way back in 1928), the Club would require an almost record breaking victory to catch Ross County!