Bolo Hopes to Lay Down a Marker

The 2015-16 Ladbrokes League 2 campaign kicks-off on Saturday and new signing Michael Bolochoweckyj is looking to help The Bully Wee get off to a flying start.

The defender joined Clyde from East Stirling at the start of the summer and, ahead of the league opener against Stirling Albion, he spoke to the official website.

Stirling have been tipped to challenge for the title this season and Bolochoweckyj, known simply as ‘Bolo’, believes the trip to Forthbank is the ideal game to start with. He said:-

“I’m looking forward to this weekend. I always think it is important to start the league season well if you have aspirations to challenge at the top, so over the first five or six games we need to get as many points as we can on the board.

“I think Stirling will be up there challenging so it is a tough game to start with, but with the players we have got we should more than match anyone in the league. We saw last season that League Two can be fickle and funny but hopefully we will get off to a good start and it will serve us well.”

The two cup ties against Livingston may have ended in defeat but, over the 210 minutes, Bolochoweckyj and his teammates competed well and the 30-year-old believes those ties have given the team something to build on:-

“It is never great to get the same team twice in both cups, but we have had a good pre-season and I think the games against Livingston helped to show us where we are. I felt that we more than matched them for fitness and I think we held our own after the first 25 minutes of the first game, when we were still trying to find our feet and our shape.

“We were unlucky not to go through on Saturday so we need to take confidence from that, because we won’t be playing against teams of that calibre every week. The fact that we held our own stands us in good stead.

“It was good to get a goal in the Petrofac match and that makes me top goalscorer for now! I think set pieces could be really important for us – with me, Mark (McLaughlin) and Junior (Chris Smith) at the back set pieces should be a big thing for us and hopefully we’ll be able to chip in with a few goals, as well as the strikers getting theirs.”

Despite remaining in same league as he was playing in last season, Bolochoweckyj has been impressed with the step up in calibre of teammates, quality of training and professionalism around the club. Discussing his first few weeks as a Clyde player, he said:- 

“It has been very different from last year at East Stirling. Clyde have definitely been a lot more professional and the calibre of player at the club is a lot higher. Training is more intense and it is much more enjoyable – I am playing with better players and it is a much more professional set-up overall, so it has been a good start.

“The gaffer has put together a good squad, there are not many good, experienced players readily available within the club’s budget but the gaffer has done well to get the players in. It is a reflection on him and the kind of person that he is that he managed to sign all the players he wanted.

“Everything that we need is here. The gaffer played at such a high level and he is trying to implement things here that he did in his career, so we have everything we need.”

Bolochoweckyj concluded by outlining his ambition to get The Bully Wee back to where he believes the club belong:- 

“Everyone knows that Clyde should be in a higher division and hopefully this year we can get the club up.

“Everybody involved in the club knows that it is time to start moving back up the leagues. Clyde are a big club with a good fanbase and we should really be higher than League 2, so the quicker we can move up the better – hopefully starting this season.”