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Cove Rangers legend Eric Watson is urging the north-east to rally for what he described as “the biggest week in my old club’s history.”

Former captain Eric, the club’s most decorated player who led us to promotion to the SPFL in 2019, would love to see Balmoral Stadium packed out with supporters for our next two cinch League One fixtures, against Alloa Athletic this Saturday and Dumbarton a week later.

The club has slashed ticket prices for the games to £10 for adults and £5 for concessions and Eric is hoping that will ensure bumper turn-outs as we bid to finish the season strongly and possibly secure promotion to the Championship.

“Getting promoted up from the Highland League three years ago was the biggest thing ever for the club up to that point,” said Eric, who is now player/manager of junior side Montrose Roselea.

“Winning League One and with it promotion to the Championship would eclipse that.

“They aren’t there yet – the guys at the club now know they still have work to do.

“We never looked any further ahead than the next match when I played for Cove, so you can be sure their focus will be on seeing if they can deal with Alloa first.

“But if they were to gain promotion to the second flight of Scottish football – so soon after being a Highland League club – it would be one of the biggest footballing fairytales in living memory.

“It’s why the next week has to be seen as the biggest in my old club’s history.

“It would be amazing if they could get the two wins they need, but the fans are going to have to play their part.

“It’s great that the club has reduced the ticket prices, that will help those who are maybe finding it tough financially at the moment.

“But the importance of the two games should be enough to ensure the Cove Rangers fans – and any neutrals in and around Aberdeen – turn out in force anyway.

“I can promise you, coming out to see the stadium packed made a huge difference when we played Berwick Rangers in the first leg of that play-off final three years ago.

“The crowd was just short of 2,000 that day (1,995) and the noise the Cove Rangers fans made, from start to finish, was just incredible.

“It really gave all of us a lift and there was no way we were ever going to lose that match.

“We won 4-0 and ensured the trip to Berwick for the second leg was a bit of a promotion party.

“You could say what Cove have ahead of them now is similar to the two legged final we faced back then.

“They know if they win both games then it’s job done.

“The difference this time though is they have the advantage of playing both at Balmoral, on a pitch they love playing on and in front of mainly their own fans.”

Eric is unable to make it to the Alloa match because Montrose Roselea are playing Banks o’ Dee at Links Park at the same time in the semi-finals of the McLeman Cup.

He is planning to go to the clash with Dumbarton though, in the hope that will be another milestone day for the club he won 13 trophies with and captained with distinction.

“When I left Cove after the Berwick game the talk was about having a five year plan to get to the Championship,” he said.

“To be honest, I thought was a bit too ambitious, even by Cove standards.

“To see them close to achieving it after just three years just shows you what can be done if you have enough people at a club who are ambitious and willing to work hard.

“What really pleases me is a lot of the players who were in the squad at Berwick are still there, guys like Harry Milne, Connor Scully and Blair Yule, who came up through the ranks at Cove.

“It would make me proud to see them proving just how talented they are by taking Cove up to where they have never been before.

“But, like I said, they still have two huge games to deal with if that is to happen.”

Tickets for Saturday’s match can be purchased HERE!

There will be more from Eric Watson in an exclusive interview in our next edition of UnCOVEred, the free online magazine we publish for every home game.

The latest edition, due to be released on Friday, also includes an interview with Cove Rangers defender Scott Ross and exclusive columns penned by manager Paul Hartley and club captain Mitch Megginson.

Article Copyright © 2022. Permission to use quotations from this article online is only granted subject to appropriate source credit and hyperlink to www.coverangersfc.com.

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