THERE is a lot of debate about plastic pitches in Scottish football at present.

Some people like them, some people don't.

We will play our first game on the new surface at Rugby Park this afternoon when we face Kilmarnock and, for us, it won't make any difference.

I know there is a big argument around their usage, but I can understand why clubs here have them.

A lot of the clubs do it from a financial point of view and it can be good for the local community as well.

Personally, I would still rather play on grass.

But what I will say is that these pitches are getting better as the years go by.

There are a lot of different types of artificial grass and new kinds of surface are coming out every year.

They are not like they were even five years ago, when it was like playing on concrete.

I can understand why clubs are doing it, especially with the weather here in Scotland.

I was down at Rugby Park earlier in the season with our Under-20s when they played Kilmarnock, so I have already seen the surface that they installed over the summer.

The day I was there, it was quite a warm evening and the pitch looked quite dry and a bit sticky.

Whatever the conditions, however, the boys will just have to deal with it and play their game. It is not an excuse.

We trained on artificial surfaces for a while before our move to Garscube in the summer, so a lot of our boys are used to it.

Now they have to adapt to playing on it in a competitive match this afternoon.

IT is a fixture that we are looking forward to and hopefully the surface will suit our passing game if it is not too sticky.

We certainly won't take the pitch into consideration when picking the team.

We will pick the best team we have available to win the game today.

That is always the same for us whether it is grass or plastic. It is a matter of putting the team on the park that you feel can beat the opposition.

No matter the surface, the aim remains the same for us.

"We won't make a big deal of the fact that we are on an artificial surface.

At the end of the day, it is a game of football and a game that, if we play like we can, we can come away with the three points we are looking for against a good Killie side.

There was a lot made of Kris Boyd leaving Kilmarnock this summer and people were wondering where the goals would come from for them.

But Allan Johnston has made a lot of changes to his squad and they do still have goals in their team.

They have started well and they will be looking at us as a chance to keep that going,

But this is the kind of game that we need to be taking something from.

After beating St Mirren in the League Cup in midweek, we have to look to kick on from there now and find a bit of consistency.

We need to get back-to-back wins and string a few results together if we want to move up the table.

It is something that we haven't done yet and we know that we have to do that if we are to get into the top six.

Hopefully we can take a lot of confidence from the cup win. It was a flat performance from both teams but we were the better side on the night.

Now we want to kick on from that and get our third Premiership win of the season this afternoon.