DAVID MARTINDALE admits he will be full of pride when he watches his former Broxburn team-mate Scott Pittman become Livingston’s record appearance holder away to Motherwell on Saturday.
The 30-year-old is due to make his 310th appearance for the Lions at Fir Park, which would take him above Keaghan Jacobs at the top of the charts.
Pittman first moved to Livingston from Junior side Bo’ness in 2015 after Martindale – who is now the manager of Livi – recommended his former Junior colleague to then Lions boss Mark Burchill.
“I’m extremely proud of wee Pitts,” said Martindale. “I’m a good friend of his family and I know they’re very proud of him. I tried on a number of occasions to get him into clubs when we were playing together at Broxburn.
“I was centre-mid and wee Pitts was an attacking mid at that point. He did my running and I did his shouting! We got him into a few clubs and got them to have a look at him.
“Then when I’d been at Livingston for about six months (as a coach) I said ‘look, how can we get him into the club?’. Mark Burchill was the manager and Burchy wasn’t overly sure at the time and I said ‘by the end of the summer, if you don’t think it’s going to be a good fit, wee Pitts will not be hard to deal with, we’ll shake hands and we’ll all move on’.
“I think he’d been at the club three or four weeks and got in the team and Burchy was like ‘brilliant’, and he never came back out the team under any manager who’s been here since.”
Martindale praised Pittman for his consistency levels.
“He’s brilliant, fantastic,” said the manager. “His level of consistency is his biggest factor. When Pitts has a bad game, he’s probably a 7/10 but most weeks he’s probably an 8 or 9 out of 10.
“He puts the team before himself, to his detriment at times. If he’s fit, he’s generally one of the first names on the team sheet.
“He’s one of those players who goes about his business quietly. He probably goes a bit unnoticed by a lot of people, but if you went into the changing room or the staff office and asked what their strongest team was, I think wee Pitts would be one of the few players in every single person’s team in this building.”
Pittman admits it will be “a special occasion” when he becomes a record holder on Saturday.
“I’ve been here seven and a half years and to play that amount of games is a good achievement for me,” he said.
“It’s been the perfect club for me. I’m really grateful to Davie. When I was playing with Broxburn, I had a few trials at teams but nothing really came of them. The gaffer got me the chance here and I’ve just tried to take it.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here