St Cuthbert Wanderers head into promotion battle on back of Haig Gordon Cup joy

St Cuthbert Wanderers head into a three-way battle for promotion this weekend.

The South of Scotland League champions face East title winners Tranent in East Lothian on Sunday before taking on West champs Darvel on Wednesday night.

Their opponents then face each other a week on Saturday, with the team with the best results gaining promotion to the Lowland League.

Saints boss Jordan Williamson said: “It’s essentially two cup finals for us and anything can happen in one-off games. We’ll be looking to go strong but we’re not naive – we know the advantage in terms of population density, better quality of player and financial support these clubs have got compared to ourselves.

“We’re not naive enough to think we can 100 per cent go toe to toe with these clubs. Yes, we’ve brought in better players from the west leagues and from pro-youth academy but, in comparison to the players these two clubs have been able to attract and the clubs they can sign players from, it’s night and day.

“We’re going to prep as best we can. We’ve looked at both teams, we understand how they play and we’ll give as good an account of ourselves as possible and wait and see what happens.”

Saints warmed up for their promotion push by beating Nithsdale Wanderers 4-2 in the Haig Gordon Cup final at Palmerston on Friday.

Nithsdale raced into a two-goal lead but Thomas Kelly reduced the deficit before the break with a penalty after Scott Ballantyne was fouled.

They drew level early in the second half through Russell Williamson with Kelly putting the Kirkcudbright side in front nine minutes from time.

And in the final minute he completed his hat-trick with another penalty, this time after a foul on Liam Fleming.

Williamson said: “We’re delighted to bring the