Graeme Stewart hopes Buckie Thistle can end their run of near misses in the Morrison Motors (Turriff) Aberdeenshire Shield.
The Jags face Aberdeen at Victoria Park this evening with a final place against Huntly or Fraserburgh at stake.
Stewart’s side haven’t won a trophy since claiming the Breedon Highland League title in 2017.
Since then Thistle have been defeated in four cup semi-finals, as well as the last two GPH Builders Merchants Highland League Cup finals.
Boss Stewart is determined to end the wait for silverware.
He said: “We’ve done quite well in cups in recent times, getting to a couple of finals, but unfortunately we haven’t won any of them.
“We need to go and win silverware. If we want to be classed as a successful team, you need to win something, not just getting to finals and finishing second or third in the league.
“The team we’ve got is definitely good enough to win something and if we do I think it will be a domino effect and more will follow.
“We want to be a club that’s challenging and winning things for a long time to come, because, with the average age of the team, I think they can get better and better.
“It’s easy to say we need to learn things because we got beat in finals, but I think we’ve been unfortunate.
“The final against Rothes (in 2020), I think we should have won because we dominated most of the game, but we gave away a late goal and we didn’t.
“Then with Brora last season they deserved it, they played better than us on the day – it was a bad performance from us.
“Do we learn from it? I guess we can, but in terms of attitude and preparation I don’t think we’ve made any mistakes.
“We can’t have too many more opportunities -we’ve got to go and win – but I’m confident we will when you see the consistency over the last three years.”
Dons provide tough opposition
Stewart is well aware reaching the final will be far from easy against full-time opposition.
Generally in the Aberdeenshire competitions, Aberdeen have fielded their Under-18s, however, in their quarter-final victory against Formartine United, Barry Robson’s Dons also included the likes of first-teamer Ryan Duncan.
Stewart added: “I expect Aberdeen to be very good. They’ll be fit, fast, organised and very sharp – as you would expect when you play against a full-time club.
“We played Hearts in the Challenge Cup and, although we beat them in the end, they blew us away a bit in the first half with their speed and sharpness.
“Once we got a hold of the game and got to grips with how they played, we managed to use our experience.
“I know it’s going to be very difficult. They’ve got some top young Scottish players in their team so we need to be on our guard.”
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