In Conversation With - Conrad Balatoni
Monday 9th August 2010
To say that we didn’t get the league season off to the best of starts on Saturday is a massive understatement. We knew that we were in for a tough game against Raith Rovers – our record against them last season told us as much – but we didn’t expect to be on the end of such a resounding defeat.
Making your debut for a new team should be a happy experience but coming on with the team trailing 3-0, as our new loan signing from Hearts Conrad Balatoni did on Saturday, would somewhat sour the whole experience.
Although clearly hurting the new Firhill recruit spoke to www.ptfc.co.uk after the game. We would turn to the subject of the game just completed a little later but to begin with Conrad let us know how long he will be at Firhill for?
“I’m here until January 3rd so it is a relatively short loan but hopefully in that time I can help Thistle to some good results and help get us up the league.”
“Obviously I came here to play football and get first team exposure and I want to play as many games as possible but the more important than that is the fortunes of Partick Thistle. Right now I’m a Partick Thistle player and I want to do my best for Partick Thistle.”
So how did the move to Firhill come about?
“I first heard about a possible move from Neil McCann who told me that Thistle were interested in taking me on loan. I trained on the Friday with Thistle and then played the friendly with Celtic the next day and I played well. I then had a couple of days back through with Hearts before being asked to come though and play another game for Thistle. After that it was up to the two clubs to agree a deal for me to come. I’m delighted that they managed to negotiate a deal and I’m finally here.”
It was impossible to ignore the events of the Raith Rovers and although Conrad only played the second 45 minutes he was feeling the pain of defeat just as sharply as anyone else.
“It’s obviously disappointing to lose the first league game of the season 4-0 and when you go down to ten men it is always going to be a hard game to get back into. The goals we gave away were slack ones and I think that we need to defend better as a team.”
Although the game may have effectively been over at 3-0 down and down to ten men there was plenty of spirit shown after the break.
“As I’ve said it was always going to be difficult in the second half but we had to go out and try and give the fans something to cheer about but unfortunately we couldn’t get a goal. I almost scored, Liam had a couple of chances and David Rowson should, perhaps, have hit his chance with his left foot. We’re creating chances and hopefully we can start tucking them away in our next game against Berwick Rangers on Tuesday.”
Does the fact that we want to bounce back from the Raith Rovers game as quickly as possible add a little more importance to the Berwick Rangers game?
“I think so. You always need a boost to your confidence after a result like that. We’re in training tomorrow (Sunday) and hopefully we’ll be okay and we can get the banter flying. We recognise that it will be hard after a result like this but we’re professionals and we want to show everyone that we can come back from it with a great performance for the fans on Tuesday.”
