'It's a difficult place to go' - Kirkcaldy Rugby Club stalwart assesses league return at fellow high flyers Preston Lodge

But the Fife outfit, currently third in the table with a game in hand on the top two – Glasgow Accies and Preston Lodge – will be back in action this Saturday when they visit Preston Lodge for a league tie which kicks off at 3pm.

Kirkcaldy director of rugby development Grant Letham told the Fife Free Press: “Traditionally Preston Lodge has always been a difficult place to go.

"They play at a place called The Pennypit and we have had some tough results there over the years.

"You know to win there you have to show up and that’s what the boys are hopefully going to do on Saturday.

"We have been really positive so far. The only down side has been a couple of postponed games unfortunately through no fault of our own, which breaks a little bit of the momentum and continuity that they have.

"But hopefully a couple of guys who picked up injuries earlier in the season – Craig Letham and Finlay Smith – will be back and they’ll go down there full strength.”

Kirkcaldy’s encouraging start to the new season comes after they finished third bottom last term, narrowly avoiding relegation.

Letham said: “Covid disruption didn’t help us last year and we ended up falling away after not a bad start.

"We just secured safety with a couple of games to go.

"We have the same head coach this time – former Samoan international player Quintan Sanft – but fortunately we’ve not been hit by injuries and we’ve got a squad which has young guys blooded last season who are now a season older and wiser.

"The leagues are going to undergo massive reconstruction this year so what we don’t want to do is drop down a league. We have to finish in the top seven of our league to stay in it.

"But listen, we want to finish as far up the league as we can, we want to turn Beveridge Park back into a bit of a fortress so folk don’t like coming to play us.

"Folk coming to us expecting to get beat as opposed to expecting to get something from us. We kind of lost that a wee bit last year.”

Letham said that another key factor in Kirkcaldy’s fine start this season has been the re-introduction of Josh Laird to the team after a spell playing in Hong Kong and Canada.

"Josh is a centre who’s played at 10 the last couple of weeks due to injuries,” he added.

"He is making a big difference in terms of experience and organisation and he’s a former Scotland youth international so he’s not too bad at the game.”