Bruce Ready For Challenge

Last updated : 17 May 2005 By Brian Cartlidge
Bruce, son of Blues boss Steve, is on a season long loan deal with Paul Sturrock's promotion hopefuls, who take a 1-0 lead from last week's first leg to Griffin Park tonight.

“We deserved the win on Thursday. We battled thought it and they made it difficult for us, especially in the second half but if you look at the full 90 minutes overall, I think our keeper had only one save to make, we were the better side in the first half and we deserved to get the advantage going into the next leg ," the 20 year-old defender told the Owls-Mad website.

“They were well up for it, they went into the tackles strong but that’s the reason we came out victorious on Thursday because we matched them physically and we had more quality on the ball. They seemed to lump it up quite often and we dealt with their long balls – so if we can do the same in the second leg we should be alright.

“Our game plan for the second leg is not to concede basically,” he admits. “We have the one-goal advantage and we can’t be making any silly mistakes but hopefully we can keep a clean sheet and come out with the win again.”

Young Bruce also hinted that he would consider a further spell at Hillsborough next season, should the chance arise.

“We’ll have to see what happens,” he said. “I have said all along that I don’t want to go back to Birmingham and play reserve-team football, especially when you have just played in a play-off semi final but if the offer from Wednesday did come along then I would be happy to stay but that’s up to the manager and for myself to keep playing well and hopefully the offer comes along.

“What’s happened to me up here is unbelievable – it’s why you want to become a professional footballer to play in games like last Thursday and if you don’t want to play in those sorts of games then you may as well not be a footballer. It is a privilege to be here though and a privilege to play in games like that.”

The winners of tonights tie will meet either Tranmere or Hartlepool in the League One play-off final later this month.