Mick Kennedy on East Kilbride, not getting paid, & hating Aberdeen win

The Herald Scotland

4 days ago

To illustrate the point, he recalls the story of the day he met owners Paul and James Kean to discuss taking the job at Scotland's newest senior team.
The way he tells it makes it hard to be sure who was interviewing whom. After assuring the Kean brothers that he would find a way to get them through the quagmire of the pyramid play-offs into the senior leagues, Kennedy had one question bouncing around his head. What then?
'If all they wanted was to make it to League Two and sit there consolidating, then I wasn't the man for the job,' he says now.
'So I told them that we should be looking to be in the Championship within five years. That was two years ago.
'I think you can do that steadily and sustainably as the prize money increases. Then if we get the right backing from sponsors and fans…'
A bold target for a club preparing to play their first ever League Two game against Spartans, Kennedy sees no harm in setting the bar high or showing a bit of ambition.
Formed in 2010 to deliver senior league football to a new town of 75,000 people on the southern fringes of Glasgow, rivals in the lower reaches of Scottish football tend to eye the new boys with something close to suspicion.
Regarded sniffily as a club throwing their money around in a quest to buy their way into the senior leagues – don't they all? – Kennedy claims the club's growth is more incremental and sustainable than that. Rubbishing talk of a big player budget he makes no attempt to play down the big targets, the big ambitions, in his head. The bar is set high.
By way of an example he recalls an interview with Ian Maxwell where the SFA chief executive spoke of Scotland punching above their weight since Steve Clarke's appointment.
'I just think that's the wrong language to be using. When you tell people that stuff they start to believe it and then when failure comes they accept it because they've been told they're not really meant to be in that environment. They're not really meant to be successful.'
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He knows, more than anyone, what can happen when a small club dares to think big. As manager of Darvel, the 45-year-old oversaw one of the biggest upsets in Scottish football history when the non-league Ayrshire side team toppled an Aberdeen side five leagues higher in the pyramid.
Like an artist trying to write the follow-up to that No.1 novelty hit, Kennedy knows how catchy the win over Aberdeen was to the country at large, but hates the idea of playing the same tune over and over until he grows sick of it. He's reluctant to be defined by one game of football.
'I actually hate that game now,' he laughs. 'I think I've managed now for 10 years and I've won nine leagues, but I get it.
'We actually went to Montrose, who were sitting second in League One the round before, and beat them 5-2.
'I was more impressed with that performance than I was with the Aberdeen performance.
'I said to the players here at East Kilbride a couple of weeks ago that success to me is winning trophies.
'Winning one game of football is not success to me.
'Success is winning stuff. That's how you should be judged.
'It's great to have those moments like Aberdeen but that's all they are. Moments.'
The comedown from toppling [[Aberdeen]] and nudging Jim Goodwin towards the Pittodrie exit was swift and brutal. John McGlynn's Falkirk travelled to Darvel in the next round and romped to a 5-1 win, with Kennedy savaged on social media for a pre-match team talk – aired on the BBC – where he branded his [[Ayr]]shire heroes, 'soldiers of love.'
Laughing, he glances around the club's impressive K-Park facility and the first player to catch his eye is defender Sean Fagan as he ambles past en route to training.
'I say some strange things Sean eh?…'
There is no disagreement or dissent and, by the sounds of things, that's probably for the best. A modern manager who puts the emphasis on building individual relationships with players, Kennedy uses the half-time hairdryer sparingly and sees no point in ranting and raving at players like the 21st century incarnation of Jim McLean. He will admit, however, to running the East Kilbride dressing room like a 'dictatorship.'
'It's not a dictatorship in the sense of I'm screaming and shouting.
'But speak to any of the boys here and they would tell you that, with no disrespect to other part-time clubs, it's the most professional environment they have been in.
'The demands are so high, so, so high. And that's in everything we do. The culture, the ethos.
'How we train, how we play. Everybody is expected to do additional work away from training and if they don't do it then they don't get in the squad on a Saturday.
'We don't carry anybody. The minute we feel we're carrying anybody, or trying to convince then they are gone.
'We have dietary requirements, we keep an eye on weight, body fat. It's proper intense.'
That being the case, a discount card to the Black Rooster Peri Peri restaurant chain seems unlikely to be included in the bonus section of a player's contract.
Raised in Abercrombie Street in Glasgow's Calton district, Kennedy worked for the Wheatley Housing group, Scotland's biggest social landlord, before he co-founded Black Rooster in 2017. The chain has now expanded to 19 stores and is moving into the London market. Effectively full-time at East Kilbride, business partner Kevin Bell handles the other stuff.
Unusually for a manager in the senior game, Kennedy accepts no payment for his work. He doesn't need the money and would happily return to amateur football tomorrow if the enjoyment of coaching at a higher level drained away.
'I have always said that I will never take a wage anywhere I go.
'Because I would never want to be conflicted by that.
'I speak to lots of managers in the leagues and it's tough. Guys in full-time jobs and guys in part-time jobs and they need the income, they need the job.
'The alternative if they chuck it is working on a building site on a Monday morning or something.
'So I understand why they put up with that stress and pressure of management even when they're not enjoying it.
'The difference with me is that I only ever go somewhere if I am going to enjoy it and if I ever felt like I didn't enjoy it I would instantly stop.'
In an industry where money dictates every cough and spit, it's an unusual approach. In the event of East Kilbride progressing through the leagues – or a bigger club calling – he'd have a decision to make, and a desire to accept a fair day's pay for a fair day's work would be natural enough. For other people, maybe.
'Someone asked me that question recently.
'I suppose if we keep progressing, the club might look to go full-time.
'Or, if I keep doing well against teams above us in the pyramid, a full-time team might come at some point.
'But I genuinely still don't think I would take a wage.
'I think I would just do the job because I felt it was the right thing to do.
'I wouldn't want to be conflicted.
'Clubs know when they hire me that I'm here for the right reasons.
'It's not about self-interest or enriching myself at all.
'I just do this because I love it and the minute I don't love it anymore I stop doing it.
'It has never been this burning desire of mine to be a manager in the senior leagues.'
Now that he is, he addresses the quest to deliver success with the passion and zeal of a methodist preacher.
His conversation is peppered with talk of culture, values, and behaviours. While other clubs in League Two fret and worry over the cost of fixing the enclosure roof or plummeting through the trap door leading to the Lowland or Highland Leagues – from where few return – East Kilbride are focused on building a football club moving in an upwards trajectory.
'The owners put their heart and soul into this club, and they want to leave a real legacy.
'The club is owned by a trust, a charity they set up and invested in.
'The last thing they want to do is let this all fall apart when they're not here any longer.'
Living in the shadows of Celtic and Rangers brings obvious challenges. The club's average crowd can be measured in hundreds rather than thousands. They beat Championship Raith Rovers in Kirkcaldy in the Premier Sports Cup and won again in Elgin, but lost six goals to Inverness after running out of legs in the second half. While a new stand was installed to meet SPFL entry criteria, [[East Kilbride]] remain a work in progress, off the pitch and on it.
'I brought the average age of the squad down to 23 this year, and that was on purpose.
'We want to be known as a club which brings boys in to play a certain style of football and gain the opportunity to move on.