Duffy: “Remaining Positive”

Clyde manager Jim Duffy took some time out with the official website to reflect on current form and despite the recent run of results the Bully Wee boss remained positive on reviewing the season as a whole…

“I appreciate our supporters have had a number of consecutive long and suffering seasons and the second half of this season has been equally as hard. The facts are the teams at the top of the league are the sides with the best resources and strongest squads. The supporters had expectations and I believe we could have matched them but injuries have decimated us in the second half of the season and these have masked our achievements and progress made in the first part of this campaign.

Jim continued, “You can’t legislate for losing so many key players for such long periods even now we are still not getting any respite with the news that Brian McQueen is unlikely to feature again this season due to injury.  Only 3 or 4 of our first team squad have avoided long term injuries this season and that would be hard for any team to absorb. On a regular basis we’ve had players missing for months rather than a couple of games.

Jim did not hide from the fact that some key players had lost form, “Players are not on the top of the game but with the squad being so tight it’s hard to alter the team accordingly. There are two ways to get out of a slump in form: hard work or change the personnel. Our squad is not big enough to rotate and bring in other experiencd players so we need to continue to apply ourselves properly and hopefully we can get some breaks in the remaining games.

“Having said all of that I do think we need to keep things into perspective as when we have most of our first choices available we can compete and results have demonstrated that. The reality is that if we had stayed injury free we were not that far away this year. I’m not going to kid anyone on and say we would have won the league or even finished in the playoffs but we would have got much closer. 

“The loss of Liam Cusack and to an extent the loss of Jordan Whyte when he was just beginning to gel with the side was a big blow.  Liam was key to us he would chase pigeons for the team! We have missed him even at training where he was such a livewire We have lacked a goal threat and don’t have the options up front of other teams or even the variety and experience we had last season and that is something we need to address next season.

“I hope the supporters sense the commitment, attitude and desire to play for the jersey. Mistakes have been made but the players are learning but it’s great to hear of supporters rallying and getting behind the team. The players and I really appreciate as it enables the younger players especially to relax and concentrate on getting a positive result rather than playing in fear of making an error. If we can keep the nucleus of this side and add to it in the front areas then I’m sure we will experience a significant improvement next season.”