COWDENBEATH simply cannot afford a repeat of their horror show at Dumbarton when they head for Dumfries this Saturday.

The 5-1 loss was a major set-back to the Blue Brazil in their bid to avoid the Championship relegation play-offs but this weekend they again face a team bidding for the Premiership promotion shake-up.

But they may have to take Queen of the South on without top scorer Kane Hemmings and defender Darren Brownlie.

The Sons seemed to get their goals all too easily and manager Jimmy Nicholl was most unhappy at the performance and the result made it only one point out of nine over the past three games which is relegation form.

Cowdenbeath are five points behind Alloa now, who again lost at the weekend, and the way things are shaping up they may well rue not beating the Wasps when they had the chance two weeks ago.

Queen of the South will be no soft touches this Saturday at Palmerston as they lie in fourth place and three points ahead of Dumbarton.

So they will be looking for the points to keep their promotion hopes alive while Cowden need a win for other reasons.

Mr Nicholl was critical of his team’s collapse at Dumbarton and will be looking for a big improvement this weekend.

“We fell away completely and gave away bad goals which was not what we needed at all and we now have just eight games left to sort things out.

“We have two games in four days coming up with Queen’s on Saturday and then Morton at home next Tuesday and we really need to look to win them both. But to do that we will have to play a lot better and make the opposition have to work a lot harder to score against us.

“We had a run of 11 points from five games which pushed us back into the picture to get out of the play-off place but only one point from the last three games has pushed us backwards”.

The manager was hoping to have top scorer Kane Hemmings back in action this weekend. The big front man was expected to come back at Dumbarton after his hamstring strain but he felt a reaction from his tranining sessions during the week and it was decided not to risk him and on Thursday he was still feeling the injury so he is likely to be missing again.

And central defender Brownlie also has picked up a hamstring problem and is in the very doubtful category.

“We need to ensure that we compete as a team a lot better than at Dumbarton,” added the manager The visit of Morton takes place on Tuesday with a 7.45pm start.