Not everyone in the Junior game is feeling frustrated over the forthcoming festive footballing famine.

The big freeze has been warmly received at injury-hit Clydebank, and in particular by seasoned striker Stevie Dallas, who is fighting to be fit for his club’s Emirates Junior Cup-tie against Port Glasgow in mid-January.

Tearing a groin muscle in the Bankies’ last outing – a 3-0 defeat of Dalry Thistle – has the 35-year-old down in the dumps not least because exper-ience is telling him not to rush into a comeback.

“I remember picking up the exact same injury as a Petershill player and making the fatal mistake of throwing myself right back in the thick of things too quickly,” he recalled with a wince.

“The upshot was I suffered a recurrence of the original tear and ended up out of action for twice as long as I should have been.

“So, though desperate to be ready for the Port game, I’m planning on doing absolutely nothing but rest up for the next couple of weeks with a view to resuming light training early in the new year.

“So in many respects this season’s winter shutdown is a real godsend as, indeed, are the snow and ice severely limiting our training workouts.

“As things stand, I’ll hopefully be back

playing again without finding myself lagging behind in match practice or in terms of my general fitness.”

Dallas is keen to play a part against Port Glasgow as he believes time is running out for him to get his hands on a Scottish Junior Cup winner’s medal.

The closest he came to achieving his dream during a notable 10-year playing stint at Petershill arrived last season when his former Springburn side ironically lost out at the quarter-final stage –to Clydebank.

He went on: “Given the luck of the draw we could go all the way to the final again, but getting over the Port Glasgow hurdle will be far from easy given they are apparently something of a bogey team to the Bankies.

“Even if we were fortunate to get through to the latter stages, there is an underlying feeling at the club that cup runs cannot be allowed to detract from our No.1 aim this season – promotion into the Super Premier League.

“This entire club is geared towards getting into the top flight, and it would mean a lot to me personally to help get them there.

“We’ve got ourselves into a decent position but there is a crying need to strengthen our playing squad if we want to push on from here.

“With all due respect, it’s simply not good enough for a club like ours to have the manager [Budgie McGhie] and coach [Stuart Allison] sitting on the substitutes’ bench as they have needed to do over the past month or so because our injury list has been nothing short of horrendous.

“It’s great to be in contention for all the top prizes going into the new year, but now is the time to strengthen key areas and give ourselves a real shot at lifting the trophies.”

The veteran’s viewpoint is obviously shared by Bankies boss McGhie who, having just missed out on landing Stuart Hendren and Gary Philips, has reportedly turned his sights on Pollok’s want-away midfielder Andy McClay.

Meanwhile, with his former Peasy team-mates hitting a bad run of form and sliding towards the wrong end of the table, Dallas is dreading the nightmare scenario unfolding of Clydebank and Petershill locking horns in a Super Premier play-off.

He said: “People keep reminding me that the possibility exists, but it’s not causing me sleepless nights at this stage of the season.

“Whether that remains the case coming towards the end of season remains to be seen, but you can take it as read that I’ll be doing everything poss-ible to help Bankies go up as the title winners or runners-up.”