Assistant Manager says fans will assist
Sunday, 5th Jul 2015Sandy Clark feels that Pars fans can play a large part in the success of the season ahead.
Sandy Clark's association with the Pars goes back to the days when he would play in the same team as Ross Jack, Istvan Kozma and George O'Boyle. He returned as part of Jimmy Calderwood's coaching team and split with former Par Darren Young as the management team at Albion Rovers, to come to Dunfermline again. He told this website:-
"This is my third time here and I have got to say that there are a lot of similarities. A lot of things are exactly as they were way back then and by that I probably mean the attitude of the fans and the way the club is. I am delighted to be back."
Sandy left League Two champions, Albion Rovers to be re-united with Allan Johnston at Dunfermline. That had been a difficult job for someone hailing from Airdrie!
"The rivalry was interesting but I thoroughly enjoyed it, it was a great year. It was part time football but the attitude of the players was absolutely spot on. We worked hard and we were successful because of that attitude. Although it is full time here at Dunfermline, we have to have that attitude here and that winning mentality to make sure that we are challenging to do well."
A part time lecturer in a Sports Performance course at Cumbernauld College, Sandy will combine that with his Assistant's job at Dunfermline:-
"I have been doing that for five years now and I do not want to give that up to be honest. It works in well with the finances at the club; I will do two full days Tuesday and Thursday, and obviously the match day. It suits everybody at the moment but we will see how things go after this year. That will be enough time I hope to have enough influence on what is happening around the place."
Sandy sees this knitting in nicely with the normal schedule at a football club where Wednesday is a day off, Monday a bit of a recovery day and a Friday a light day ahead of the Saturday.
"Tuesday and Thursday are the two hard working days and I am looking forward to getting into it. Obviously right now the College is off so I have been in every day. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with the lads, their attitude has been right and we are on the right track. We still need some new players which we are working on but we are on line to do well.
"It is early days yet but on Saturday it was pleasing in that every player who played on that pitch worked really hard. It is so important that everybody works really hard, draws together and tries to do the things that Allan and I are trying to install in them during training. That worked yesterday.
"We need to try and improve the squad for everybody's benefit and to make sure that we are challenging at the top end of the league. We will work on that in the next few weeks. Yesterday was a really good start as had been pre season. The last two weeks had seen good attitude and commitment from the players. If we keep that up, and we keep getting things right then we will have a good season."
Clark and Johnston formed a successful partnership before at Palmerston Park when they won the Scottish Second Division. Sandy confirmed that the manager likes to play attacking football:-
"He wants to get the ball forward, wants to score goals and that is the way we will work. It is very similar in lots of ways to the year we had at Queen of the South. We tried to be really proactive and attack teams. We worked hard to get that team to get the ball forward and are going to try and do the very same thing."
Drawing from his past experience at Dunfermline Sandy added:-
"We will have massive crowds behind us at home because the season ticket sales are going really well. We know that we will get good backing if we can produce it on the pitch, I have absolutely no doubt that Dunfermline fans will be one hundred per cent behind us and they will be there in numbers."
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