Preparing for next step
Sunday, 21st May 2023“We need to be on the ball and we need to be working even harder again because we don’t want to live off the success of winning League One
Although his season was a fortnight behind him, James McPake satisfied his hunger for more by watching Airdrieonians defeat Hamilton Academical in the Championship play-off on Saturday. Having great respect for both managers - Rhys McCabe and John Rankin - he was there strictly as a neutral.
There will be space for a family holiday but the manager still expects a busy period ahead of him. He told the website:-
“The work doesn’t stop on this side, it is different when you are a player. First and foremost we are working on getting the programmes out to them. They have had enough of a break now and we will start breaking them back in.
“The joy for them is that they can go enjoy themselves, enjoy their successful season and then you get a lovely message with your programme in it and you feel sick looking at it. That’s been going on in the background and there is a lot of work going on in the background as well.”
There has been a little time for James to take on the school run and being a dad but that’s all in full knowledge come the middle of June it will be full steam ahead.
“We worked really hard last season but it is a challenge for ourselves as a coaching staff. Credit to the work that every member of staff put in, they have been key to our success this season but we are going to need to go even harder next year and work that bit harder because we are going up a division.
“We will push everybody at the football club until we feel that we are at our maximum point. We are still very early in this journey, that’s nine months that we have been here now. That’s very early, sometimes you don’t get that at a football club I understand that.
“When you are in a job that can change quickly - it has been a good nine months - but we know what can happen in football. That’s why we need to be on the ball and we need to be working even harder again because we don’t want to live off the success of winning League One, we want to go and win the next game we play which will be against St Pauli.”
The friendly against the German 2 Bundesliga side comes up quickly on Friday 23rd June not long after the players return for pre-season training. In what is expected to be a large crowd Dunfermline would dearly love to extend their unbeaten home record. James explained:-
“We want to approach it the same way from the first pre season game and take the momentum with us. The one thing that I will say is coming back with that momentum is much better than the feeling we had this time last year coming in after the disappointment.
“Again that is testament to the players, the board and the fans for getting behind us. They were hurting when we came in last year as well. I don’t think we started the season spectacularly well either but they saw that they worked hard and they bought into that. That’s the promise that will continue.”
And will the manager’s ‘busy period’ include early signatures and new signings?
“It could be someone that we have been speaking to for a while or it could be somebody who pops up on the very last day. We will react when the reaction is needed.”
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