Forwards Craig Cowan and David McNaught have each scored hat-tricks in the Millburn Park side’s last two games. Cowan bagged three in the 7-3 defeat to league leaders Cambuslang Rangers on October 25, while McNaught got all the goals in the 3-0 home win over East Kilbride Thistle on November 1.

Vale didn’t have a league game at the weekend—due to the odd number of teams in the league—giving Hamill plenty of time to prepare for the trip to second bottom side Forth on Saturday and the importance of his strikers scoring is not lost on the manager.

He said: “Obviously you want your forwards to score goals. We lost Scott Arthur to Renfrew this year, he scored 20 odd goals last year, so it is important we try to replace those goals.

“David McNaught got a hat-trick against East Kilbirde and Craig Cowan didn’t deserve to be on the losing side against Cambuslang when he got his three goals, hopefully they can get a few more.” After a slow start to their league campaign Vale’s next two fixtures—coming against the bottom two sides in the league, Forth and Newmains—represent a good chance to get six points on the board and improve on their postion of sixth in the Central District Second Division. However Hamill is taking nothing for granted in those ties.

He said: “Forth is a horrible place to go, they’ve had some changes this year but probably are not as bad as the table suggests.

“We’ve already beaten Newmains at their place 5-2 so we are confident we can do well, these games are only useful if we win them.”