Jordon Brown has urged Peterhead to grasp their second chance at promotion.
The Blue Toon were pipped to the League Two title and automatic promotion back to League One by Montrose.
But the Buchan side have a second chance in the play-offs and Brown says they need to take it.
Tomorrow Jim McInally’s team face Stirling Albion at Forthbank in the first leg of the semi-final.
After the return leg at Balmoor on Saturday, the winner of the tie will face Queen’s Park or Stenhousemuir in the play-off final.
Brown said: “The aim was promotion and it was gutting not to do it by winning the league.
“I don’t think anyone in our dressing room ever believed we wouldn’t win the league.
“So that’s a failure. But the chance of promotion is still there and we’ve got to grasp that second chance.”
Brown believes the next fortnight is a test of character for the Blue Toon squad.
But the midfielder is confident they will cope with it and added: “In the last few weeks I think we’ve had heaps of tests of character and we’ve passed them.
“We know how good this squad is and we know that over the course of the season we’ve won a lot of games.
“We’ve come up short of the title which is frustrating – but we need to go again in the last two weeks of the season.”
This is the third successive year that Peterhead have been involved in play-offs at the end of the season.
Two years ago they were defeated in their bid to gain promotion to the Championship and last year they were relegated to League Two after losing to Forfar in the final.
On both occasions the Blue Toon entered the play-offs in poor form and lacking momentum.
However, they have won their last six games and Brown believes that could be important.
The 25-year-old said: “We are in good form. In the last few years we’ve been poor in the play-offs. So it’s good to be on a run going into them. As players we need to pick ourselves up because the dressing room was deflated on Saturday.
“We need to pick ourselves up and be ready on Wednesday and ready on Saturday so we can hopefully take ourselves into the next week and the play-off final.
“Over the last six weeks winning the title was out of our hands and we were hopeful. We didn’t get our hopes up too much, all we could do was win the six games.
“We did that and we just need to take our hat off and say ‘well done’ to Montrose.
“We’ve got 76 points and it hasn’t been good enough to win the league.
“When we won it four years ago we had 76 and won the league by 13 points. It is disappointing that it wasn’t good enough this time.”
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