In Conversation With - Paul Paton
Monday 6th September 2010
On Saturday it was two goals from Kris Doolan, taking his tally from the last two games to three, that helped see off Ayr United in the Challenge Cup. As impressive as Kris’ form in front of goal on Saturday was it was teammate Paul Paton that collected the ALBA Man of the Match award at the end of the game.
www.ptfc.co.uk caught up with Paul just after he had received his award on Saturday and suggested to him that he must have been happy with his performance.
“I was happy with my performance against Ayr United and in fact I’ve been happy with my performances all season. Against Ayr though the most important thing wasn’t individual performances, but getting the win for the team. We’ve let a lot of people down recently, nobody more so than ourselves. So to get the win went some small way to make up for that.”
Although not on the score sheet himself it was Paul’s hand in both goals that helped him to win the Man of the Match award.
“Playing wing back I always fancy myself to create goals and I have been getting plenty of balls into the box this season and I just need to keep doing that. Against Ayr it was two good finishes from Kris Doolan which will do his confidence a world of good.”
So having nearly uprooted a post against Cowdenbeath with a shot is a Paul Paton goal or two on the cards this season?
“I certainly feel that I am more than capable of getting a couple of goals this season. It’s just a case of trying to keep getting into the right kind of positions and hopefully get a bit more luck.”
Moving away from his own contribution to Saturday’s game, Paul provided us with his assessment of the game as a whole.
“I thought that we totally dominated the first half but we gave away another daft goal and Ayr came back into the game and the second half became a bit of a slog after that. First half I felt that we were different class but we definitely faded in the second half.”
Now that we are in the semi-final is there any preference to who we are paired with in Thursday afternoon’s draw.
“I think we just want to get a home tie. We would fancy our chances against anyone at Firhill and we will take anyone at home as we know that we are going to have to beat the best at some point if we are going to win the competition.”
The prospect of potentially reaching the final is something that excites Paul despite the fact that the Challenge Cup is often derided by people.
“A lot of people don’t regard the Challenge Cup as a particularly important competition but I think if you were to talk to people that have played in a Challenge Cup Final it would be a different story. I’ve never played in a final in first team football so I would be delighted if we were to reach this season’s final.”
