Shire will have last laugh

Jun 22 2008 By Gordon Waddell

THERE is a dog-eared copy of Alex Ferguson's autobiography on Jim McInally's desk at Firs Park. A subliminal reminder of what can happen when you start at the bottom in this ground and work your way up.

Or second bottom at least. But the East Stirlingshire manager doesn't have his eye on the giddy heights of the Champions League.

He doesn't even have them on the dizzying summit of the Third Division. Yet.

Just on keeping the rest of football from laughing at them. Again.

The former Morton boss stunned many by sticking his reputation on the line with rock-bottom Shire nine games from the end of last season.

But three wins and two draws in their final six games saw them escape bottom place on the last day for the first time in six seasons - and their diehards celebrated like they'd just seen the second coming.

Now McInally has the players back in for pre-season, the first team in the country with their boots on - and he has respectability at the top of his priority list.

Jim said: "We had a meeting with the club's owner Spencer Fearn and the guys from the Supporters Trust and they asked what my hope for the season was.

"I had to be honest and say, 'To make sure we're not a laughing stock'.

"I know we scraped away from bottom place on the last day and I realise what that meant for the club but towards the end of last season we lost 12 on the trot.

"That can't happen again. The rot has to stop. We need to be taken seriously as more important for McInally is to reward a group of fans who have stunned him since he arrived in March.

He said: "These supporters deserve a grade up from what they're getting. The last day of the season I couldn't believe the celebrations - there was tears, champagne, you name it.

"It was something I didn't think was worth celebrating but I was pleased for the fans because when have they had the chance in recent years?

"I've been taken aback by the enthusiasm - I've never come across supporters like them in my life.

"The players should love it here because they don't play with pressure. The fans back you come hell or high water.

"There's a guy who comes in every night at training, makes soup, sandwiches, tea - he's just a fan.

"They even had £5000 in a manager's fund. They wouldn't give it to the club because of the politics but I used it to buy heart monitors for the lads."

When it comes to his own reputation McInally is determined not to put it on the line for nothing. He earned it as a coach with Celtic's youth set-up then four years at Morton brought him a Second Division title and Jim admits he and sidekick Martin Clark had to think carefully about taking on a side who were propping up Scotland's other 41 senior teams.

He said: "Football management now is so difficult because everything's scrutinised. You start thinking, 'Do I really want to put myself up for the abuse?

"Martin and I thought long and hard about taking this.

Shire were on a nine-game losing run and the challenge, the belief you can do something about it, gets to you."

Then Clark butted in and laughed: "Aye but after the first three games we thought, 'What have we done?'

"We lost to East Fife, Elgin and Stranraer and I thought we'd made a fool of ourselves."

But McInally added: "To do what we did at the end of the season was fantastic because the club were concerned about losing membership of the SFL.

"But the problem was, on a bad run like the one they had, they just accepted it can happen. We have to change that this season."