PARS winger Andy Stirling admits he is desperate to force his way into the starting line-up after overcoming his summer injury hell.

The former Stranraer player has been a frustrated figure in his early days in the black and white having yet to start a competitive game for the club since joining in May.

He has been restricted to four substitute appearances since making his return at St Mirren last month but started the Fife Cup win over East Fife before being given a run out in a 2-1 closed-door defeat to Motherwell on Tuesday.

The 24-year-old hopes to have done enough to force his way into Jim Jefferies’ team for Saturday’s home clash with Peterhead and told Press Sport, “It was good to get a run out against Motherwell because I’ve been out for a while. But I’m feeling a lot better than I did before and my whole goal is to try and get involved. I’ve had 20 minutes here and there and I hope that that will put me in the manager’s thoughts because everything we do is guided towards the Saturday. But I’ll just need to wait and see what the manager thinks is the best way forward for the team.

“There’s no getting away from the fact that it has been frustrating because that’s the whole point of being here. I’m feeling good and I’m chomping at the bit to get back in but I just need to keep a level head, train well and hopefully be more involved.” Despite a lively display from the bench at Cappielow, Stirling was unable to prevent the Pars slumping to a 2-1 defeat at their promotion rivals and the Paisley-born player offered no excuses for what he described as the team’s “worst performance of the season” in Greenock.

But he urged his team-mates to bounce back against the Blue Toon and continued, “It was tough to take, especially with it being Morton and a team who may be closest to us. It was a comfortable 2-1 and we just didn’t compete, which was the most disappointing thing. We all know it but we probably won’t play as badly all season. They’ve got one up on us already because we were all thinking it was a chance to lay down a marker as they were a point behind us and the only other full-time team. We could’ve gone four points ahead and now we’re chasing, which is not where we want to be at the moment.

“We are favourites to win the league so we have to hit the ground running but it was just one of those days. Although we don’t forget it, there’s no point on dwelling on it because it’s done now. We have to move on, focus on Saturday and hopefully get three points. We hope to put another run together of four or five games and see where it takes us.

“When we play at home we expect teams to come and frustrate us. Maybe Peterhead will come and have a go and fair play if they do, but we did it well in our last game and have to learn to deal with it.”