Carluke Rovers were on Route to face Ellon United in the First Round of the Scottish Junior Cup, when I found some time to write a long overdue report for our website, my apologies to all who follow us.

Last year it would be fair to say that we had a positive season finishing in 5th position in the league which was an improvement on the previous season, however I feel we lost points in key games due to injuries and suspensions and as a result were unable to field our strongest team and with inexperienced players and players playing out of position did not do as well as I believe we could have.

During the closed season Colin Slater and his back room staff worked hard to bring in new players to fill key positions within in team, Jonny Wilson, who played junior with Armadale Thistle, Gary Gow, who played for Lanark United, and Dan Kindlan who played amateur with Overtown Thistle, and Ryan Smillie who after a long drawn out transfer deal we finally secured Ryan from Petershill.

Our pre-season campaign started well, along with the league cup section unfortunately we seem to have returned to similar state of last season, injuries injuries and more injuries, while our Start to our league campaign with the results, can be described as a disaster, moral in the team is low however at this particular stage i am not overlay concerned, I would be if we were fielding our strongest team..

Unfortunately the other position with some of the less experienced players we would normally playing friendlies to allow them to develop and learn, however my concern would be that we could pick up further injuries.. The key is not to panic at this point allow players to get back from injury and move forward as a club with full backing of our support and the community of Carluke..

On a positive note we are delighted to have signed Jonathan Grier who was released earlier this week from Cambuslang Rangers, Jonathan will make his debut today against Ellon United, in the First Round of the Scottish Junior Cup.  He has also played for Airdrie, u19, he also had first team and reserve experience at Airdrie, during his youth development Jonathan played 4 years pro youth at Hibernian, so a warm welcome Jonathan to Carluke Rovers good luck for today and we hope you enjoy your time at this great club..

Hopefully we can grind out a result today against highland junior team Ellon United… Come on the Rovers…