Promotion to Europe's top flight is still very much on the radar as Scotland take on Russia today in the semi-final of the European Nations Championships II at Glasgow Green.
Derek Forsyth's charges have racked up three straight wins in the pool stages, but the Russian encounter is at the business end of the tournament, the tie is a winner-take-all affair with promotion guaranteed for the winner.
Russia will be no push-over, they are two places above the Scots in the world rankings and are also unbeaten in the tournament with a win and two draws.
However, Forsyth said: "We played them in January as part of our preparation for the World League. The matches were very closely contested and I expect today's match will be another tight game."
In the three-test match series, the Russians won the opening encounter 3-2, the second ended in a 2-2 draw, while the last one fell victim to a frozen pitch.
Forsyth has confirmed that he has a full squad available to him. "We have no injury concerns which is good news. The lads have been very diligent with the recovery processes set by our physios."
That means that Scotland's lethal vanguard of Alan Forsyth, Kenny Bain and Lee Morton, who have scored all ten goals between them, will be on duty to give the Russian defence the runaround.
The other semi-final pits favourites France against Wales. The French seem to have recovered from their shock 2-1 reversal at the hands of the Scots in the opening game to hand out thumpings to both Ukraine and Portugal.
Although they only finished second in Scotland's pool, the world No.16 will fancy their chances of returning to Europe's elite despite the fact that Wales were impressive winners of their group.
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