This piece is an extract from yesterday's The Rugby Road Gates newsletter, which is emailed out at 6pm every Wednesday. To receive our full, free Kilmarnock newsletter straight to your email inbox, click here.

What a season the club is having. The form since December was what we all hoped the team was capable of, however, even the most optimistic fan couldn’t have foreseen the steep upturn in fortunes after an up-and-down first few months of the campaign.

The draw at Celtic encapsulated everything we’ve come to expect. Structured, hard-working, together and quality. We’re able to compete and, most importantly, have the confidence to take on the very best.

One vital cog in the machine is Stuart Findlay. I sat down with him last midweek to discuss various topics, some of which I can’t share right now, but stay tuned for more on that soon.

Here is our Q&A from all things this season. Enjoy!

If things had fallen differently, the club could’ve won a cup under Steve Clarke. It’s Aberdeen next, do you feel it could be Killie’s year if you negotiate that tie?

There haven’t been many teams this year that we’ve not managed to beat. The teams that we haven’t managed to beat, they’ve been really close games. There’s not been a team that dominated us, outwith one or two games maybe for a half. The further you get in the competition the more you start to look towards the end. We’ve got a tie in the quarter-final where we won an equivalent league game. We’ve beaten Aberdeen away already, so we know it’s something we can do. We know we’ve got a good chance against a team that we know we’ve already beaten at their stadium this season. Knowing that game gets you to Hampden and then you’re two games away from lifting a trophy, anybody can win two games of football on their day. So it’s not something I want to say ‘I think we’re going to win the cup,’ but now we’re at the quarter-final stage it would be silly not to think about maybe being the team to lift that trophy.

So many good players will have never played in a semi-final or final, let alone win a cup, so there must be guys here who want that experience

I think that’s my biggest regret from the time under Clarke, that we never made a Hampden semi-final. We only managed to get to the last eight. It would be a nice moment to get to Hampden. I’ve been lucky enough to play at Hampden but not in that sort of spectacle that comes with a semi-final or a final. That would be a different feeling from what I’ve had. It’s something I 100 percent want to do at some point in my career, and being one game away, there probably won’t be many better chances.

READ MORE: The highs & lows of Derek McInnes' 100 games at Killie

How do you feel your loan is going?

It was a nervy one to come back on loan. I was in America and I didn’t play as much as I would’ve liked. I signed for Oxford to restart my career. I’ll be the first to admit it, I had a really poor season. Mentally, it was hard for me to try to get back into playing every week and not be able to find form. I’m not using the mental side of things as an excuse, I just didn’t have a good season at all. I was told I could go out on loan. Obviously, with three years left on your contract, you know you have to do quite well because you need to try to get something going again. I got the call from the manager and my first reaction was that I’d love to go back to Kilmarnock. My dad made a good point though in that you need to be careful as it isn’t always the same when you go back. I was wary of that, you don’t want to almost ruin your reputation. The fans held me really highly before I signed, and when I saw the comments on social media when I did come back, it did give you those sorts of nerves where you’re thinking ‘What if I don’t perform in the same way?’. The season couldn’t have gone much better. To be sitting fourth, I think I’ve managed to play my way back into the form that I was remembered for at Kilmarnock. I’m back to being happy with my game and I’m back to being relaxed on the park. Hopefully, we continue it, we finish the season strongly and then you never know what can happen next year. I’ve still got two years left at Oxford, but if that’s something that the club isn’t interested in keeping me at Oxford, then I’ll be more than happy to see what options I have, especially considering how good the season has been, it’s not something I would ever turn my nose up at.

That was my next question – would you be open to coming back again on a permanent basis or another loan?

It’s a hard thing to say in football because 95 percent of players don’t have the luxury of picking where they’re going to end up. It’s a matter of who needs you, at what time and for what sort of clubs. All I can say about the situation is that it’s not a club that I’d ever turn my back on. It’s always an option I would take very seriously no matter what stage of my career I’m at. I’ll just need to see what the clubs want at the end of the season and make my decision off the back of that.