Banks o’ Dee skipper Kane Winton has urged his team-mates to focus on pulling away from the bottom of the Breedon Highland League as we head into the new year.

Dee kick-off 2023 with a tough trip to face Nairn County at Station Park on Saturday.

The points deduction imposed on the club ended any hopes of us being involved in the battle for the top positions in our first season competing at this level.

Kane admitted the target now is ensuring Dee steer clear of bottom spot and the possibility of being involved in a play-off to stay in the division.

Kane said: “We need to start climbing the table.

“We are more than capable of doing that, but it’s going come down to how hard we are willing to work to start getting some points on the board.

“It won’t be easy at Nairn, as we have already discovered every away game in this league is challenging.

“It’s also exciting because a lot of us, including myself, are playing at grounds we’ve never been at before and facing sides we would never have got the chance to in the past.

“It’s a tough environment to be learning new things in, but we have to take that in our stride.

“We don’t like being where we are in the league right now, so we have to show we can go to these new places and earn the results that will take us up to a more respectable position.”

Kane accepts it would would also be helpful if we could be on a good run of form in the lead up to next month’s Highland League Cup semi-final. The draw for the semis us due to take place later this month.

Kane said: “That is something we are really looking forward to.

“It would good if we had some momentum going into what is our last chance to go on and maybe get something out of the season.”

Club captain Kane accepts we will certainly have to play a lot better than we did in our last outing, the 4-1 home defeat to table leaders Brechin City on December 30.

He said: “There is clearly a lot we can learn from our performance that night.

“We went through a horrible 15 minute spell when we lost a few goals because we didn’t defend properly.

“It was similar to what happened during the second half when we played them down at Brechin the week before.

“You simply can’t afford to do stuff like that against the top sides in this league.

“I suppose you could say we have been a bit naive at times, which was always a danger because this is the first season a lot of us have played at this level.

“It’s annoying because there have also been plenty of occasions when we have shown we can compete against the best sides.

“The challenge now is to learn from what happened against Brechin and make sure we do a lot better in the games ahead of us.”