Billy Dodds says Caley Thistle must park all thoughts about the Scottish Cup as they prepare for a make or break Championship period.
Inverness have progressed to the last semi-finals of the competition, and will meet League One side Falkirk at Hampden Park on Saturday, April 29.
The match will kick off at 12.15pm, which will mean an early start for Caley Jags supporters travelling from the Highlands.
Following Caley Jags’ 2-1 victory over Kilmarnock on Friday in the last eight, excitement has been building about their return to the national stadium – where they lifted the Scottish Cup with a victory over the Bairns in 2015.
In the meantime, Inverness are seven points adrift of fourth place in their efforts to secure a Championship promotion play-off place.
With Saturday’s trip to Queen’s Park the first of nine matches remaining, Dodds is entirely focused on league business.
He said: “You can imagine after the result, after the draw, it is a good place to be.
“But it is time to realise we’ve got to be concentrating on league fixtures now.
“I can see the focus. It doesn’t mean to say we’ll do it, but I can see their steely determination in training and how they now want to knuckle down to league business.
“We’re going to give it a go, that’s all I can say.
“I can’t guarantee anybody anything, but we’ll be trying our damnedest to get three points on Saturday and build from that.
“I don’t really want to speak about semi-finals. We’re going to get plenty of media attention in the run-up to the semi-final that week, so it is time to focus on Queen’s Park.”
Coming weeks vital for Inverness
Although 27 points remain up for grabs, Dodds knows the games approaching most imminently will go a long way towards determining whether his side can keep a promotion challenge alive.
He added: “I don’t think I’ll need to poke and prod the players.
“Sometimes you have to, but not with the group we’ve got. We realise what we need to do.
“It is now or never time. We have to make sure we put some results on the board.
“We’ve done that in the last two fixtures with four points from six against Dundee and Ayr, and we hope to add to it.
“I just want them to keep chipping away. If we can get a few results, we can reel in one or two and we’re hoping to make teams panic.
“We have hard fixtures. Just look at our next three – Queen’s Park, Partick and Morton.
“We have to make sure we do something special in these three fixtures.
“That will bode well going forward in terms of what we will need to do in the last six games.
“We’ve got to give ourselves a chance.
“Within the next month, we’ll pretty much know if we’re going to be in with a chance of making the play-offs or not.”
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