INTERVIEWS

This season I will be continuing with the popular interviews with football people both inside and outside the club, this seasons interviews started with new St Mirren manager Danny Lennon and continue with Raith boss John McGlynn

John McGlynn, Raith Rovers Manager

This week I popped down to Starks Park, home of last season’s Scottish Cup Semi Finalists, Raith Rovers to have a chat with manager John McGlynn.

I started off by asking John how preparations were going for the new season         “Very well, we started really back in January when we started talking to one or two players who were out of contract and tied a couple up early on but we couldn’t announce these until they had been sanctioned by the SFA and really you never know until it actually goes through, we have brought in John Baird, a striker from Airdrie he got 12 or 13 goals for them last season which would have made him our top scorer by quite a way. Willie Dyer has joined us from Brechin, he is a left back and has impressed me a couple of times when we have played against them, Scott McBride has come in from Cowdenbeath, he is a player Paul and I have been watching and got the chance to bring him here and then we have brought in Andrew McNeill from Montrose, he is a goalkeeper who has got SPL experience with Hibernian in the past so he will fight it out with David McGurn for the number one spot.” “As far as training goes we have had 12 sessions now, starting at Heriot Watt University with fitness tests, we will test the guys again in a month or so and there times should have improved. We have then been working hard building up fitness etc, unfortunately picked up a couple of niggles, Iain Williamson developed an infected blister and Dougie Hill strained his groin but both are now there or thereabouts, other than that it’s so far so good, we are training at a high tempo, that’s the way we play so we train in exactly the same way”

I asked John where he was aiming for this season, “ Seventh was a good finish for our first season back in Division 1 but it’s all about improvement and I see top six as a minimum but top 4 is definitely possible. We need to score more goals, particularly at home, we are better set up this year but definitely didn’t score enough goals, defensively we were ok but we also need to learn how to close down games and kill it, we gave away far too often late in the game last season. The Scottish Cup run showed we can compete and I will be looking for us to take that experience in to the other cup competitions". Jimmy Nicholl recently said that being back managing a side like Cowdenbeath was proper football and John agreed “I heard Terry Butcher say something similar, I think that the players are more honest, their wages are more on the same level as the man in the street, they are maybe not as gifted as the players in a higher division but they work harder for themselves and the team so I can see where he is coming from.”

Raith loaned out a few players to Junior clubs and I asked John if Juniors were taking the place of reserve sides for some senior clubs, “Our problem last season was the weather, the reserves had played 9 before Christmas but then the weather struck and nobody was playing, towards the end of the season our first team were playing 2 or 3 games a week so there was no chance of fitting reserve games in so with players like Craig Wedderburn, Mark Whatley and Lee Bryce who weren’t in the first team, they wouldn’t have got a game. The Junior game is a decent standard and there is no crowd harsher than a Junior crowd so it gives the younger lads experience of what it’s like to hear criticism and use it to positive effect.

 I asked where he saw both Craig, who was with us last season, and local boy Jamie Mackies' futures. “Craig is a good young defender who has come back quicker and sharper this summer, he has got the ability to play the ball which is always a bonus for a big defender, I will be looking to play Craig in some of the friendlies and we will see how it goes but he has experienced players to dislodge so it maybe a case of going out to a lower league SFL club to further his education and then come back, but he certainly has a future. Jamie is a talented boy and I spotted that very early, I played him as a sub at 15 in the first team, he times his run really well and has got a great shot, he isn’t scared to put his foot in and get hurt which is a great trait for a midfielder, I am looking for Jamie to break back in to the first team squad this season.

Finally I asked John for his thoughts about the World Cup, “There have been some poor games and some very poor games but there have been one or two decent games, the trouble is you have the best footballing talent in the world cancelling each other out which undoubtedly leads to boring games however, it is up to Messi and the like to rise above it. England have suffered through the loss of Rio Ferdinand, he had built up a good understanding with Terry and he was a big loss to overcome but these players don’t become bad players overnight, the same as Fabio Capello doesn’t become a bad manager, he was the best manager prior to the build up to the tournament, but that’s football at a higher level I guess”

I thanked John for his time and he wished St Andrews United all the best for the new season.