Despite Whitehill being several places higher than Vale in the league, Ali Smith believes confidence can be taken from the performance in Saturday’s game against University of Stirling.

Vale matched Stirling, who are also in the upper reaches of the league, all the way until going down to a 90th minute Paul McAfferty winner.

And Hibs loanee Smith said: “I think we played well against Stirling Uni until the last ten or fifteen minutes when we maybe switched off a bit. So we can be confident of getting a result.

“Since I’ve come in it has been good to get some game time. I’ve been injured for the last couple of weeks so I need to try and get back in.

“But the boys have been doing well and have had some good results.”

Manager Chris Anderson echoed his winter signing’s thoughts on Saturdays game.

“We can take positives because everyone worked really hard, but I don’t think there was much quality in the game.

“There wasn’t really that many chances for either side and although we worked hard, it was a lack of concentration in the last 20 minutes of the game that cost us. We just switched off a little bit”, he said.

Whitehill will also be looking to bounce back from a disappointing result at the weekend, as they lost 3-1 at home to Edinburgh University – their third defeat in four matches. Vale can take further heart from the fact that they managed a 2-0 win over Welfare in the reverse fixture earlier in the season.

Form

Vale WDWLL

Whitehill WLLWL

Previous meeting this season

WW 0-2 VOL – McIntosh, Motion – (10/09/16)