AZIZ BEHICH has clocked up the miles for his country. Now he will go the extra yard for his club.
The Australian returned to Scotland in the hours before the trip to Ibrox on Saturday after turning out in two international friendlies against Ecuador.
The first saw Behich play the full 90 minutes in a 3-1 win. The second was a 2-1 defeat as he got another 54 minutes under his belt for the Socceroos.
He was given an early finish by boss Jim Goodwin at the weekend and replaced by Mathew Cudjoe for the closing stages of the Premiership fixture.
A 2-0 reverse at Ibrox leaves United still stranded at the foot of the standings ahead of their clashes with Hibernian, Motherwell and Livingston before the split.
Behich said: "No player wants a relegation on their CV. I’ve been in relegation battles before and come out on top.
"We are a tight-knit group in this dressing room and I am very positive we’ll get out of this position.
"A dressing room can go one way or the other - and with this bunch of boys, I can only see it going one way.
READ MORE: Rangers 2 Dundee Utd 0: Five talking points as Malik Tillman shines
"It’s been a long year for myself - non-stop - and I only got back into Scotland 24 hours before the Rangers game.
"It was my third game in 10 days, travelling for about 60 hours. But I’m doing what I can to help the team and I’ll always put the team first. There’s not long left and you’ve just got to grind it out.
"I’ve been around long enough to deal with this. When it’s international football, you focus on that and when it’s back to club football, I know the situation we are in.
"I’m one of the most experienced players here and, with a lot of young players, you try to help them through the situation.
"I felt alright until towards the end. For us Australian internationals, it’s not easy with the travel.
"Towards the end, there was a bit of fatigue and the gaffer said not to take any chances, with the big games coming up. It was just a precaution."
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