Latest news with #Kilmarnock
Daily Record
7 hours ago
- Sport
- Daily Record
Kilmarnock ace 'excited' by season ahead but admits they must improve on Kelty showing
The 31-year-old admitted it was a frustrating evening in Fife but sees plenty of positives as the league season approaches Kilmarnock midfielder Rory McKenzie knows his side's display against Kelty Hearts wasn't good enough - but he refuses to be too downcast following their Premier Sports Cup penalty shoot-out defeat in Fife. Killie would have taken a huge step towards confirming their place in the knockout stages if they'd picked up the points at New Central Park, but a string of fine saves from Ryan Adamson thwarted their hopes. And the stopper, only in the team because Corey Armour was ineligible to face his parent club, saved two penalties in the shoot-out to give the hosts the bonus point. Despite the disappointment, it's still a case of win and in for Killie as they know three points at home to East Fife on Saturday will see them finish as Group H winners and progress. McKenzie said: 'We didn't really create much to be honest, a draw was probably a fair result. I thought Kelty were really impressive on the night and we just didn't do enough to score. "If we win on Saturday we still go through so it's still in our hands. Everyone looking at it from the outside just expects the bigger teams to roll the smaller teams over but it's not the case. Yes, we should be better but these games are always tough. "We're not happy after that, it wasn't good enough but the positive is that it's in our own hands. It is a clean sheet and George (Stanger) has come in and done really well this season so we'll take the small positives.' It's been a summer of change for Killie as McKenzie enters his 15th season at the club. A new manager along with a whole host of exits and new faces - and the 31-year-old admits he's seeing plenty to get excited about. He said: 'It's a big change, the way we want to play. It's going to take time but we're all positive even after this result that we're going in the right direction. The majority have been with us since the start of pre-season and came to Holland with us. It's a good bunch and I'm excited. "I'm not a huge talker but if boys want to chat to me, I'm more than happy to talk about the club. I guess that comes with that respect of being here for so long that they know they can come and talk to me. Having boys who are familiar with the club can help.'
BBC News
a day ago
- Sport
- BBC News
Is the 'Killie corpse' of last season still lingering?
We asked for your views on Kilmarnock's penalty shootout defeat to League 1 Kelty Hearts in the Premier Sports what some of you said:Gazza: Killie just couldn't break down a stubborn Kelty defence. However, some bizarre refereeing decisions may have played their part. Penalty shootouts and Killie tend not to go in our favour. We will need to start taking our We need a proper striker in pronto. Bruce Anderson keeps missing sitters and Marley Watkins looks uninterested. New boys need to settle in but none look like 10/15 goal strikers. Go and get Theo Bair on loan and give us a focal point. At least Tom Lowery is a A disappointing game. Kilmarnock struggled to make a real impact. Kelty, as expected, parked the bus but it's surprising that Killie couldn't find something to break their defence!William: How much longer do they require to "hone their skills" and "blend as a team"? It's still fundamentally the corpse left from last Disappointed, obviously, and the team must be concerned about goalscoring. Regardless of who is called a 'striker' in the team, it's everyone's responsibility to be able to score goals and get forward not always be thinking; 'I'm out of position'. A good team works hard for each other and is able to read Our defence seems to be taking shape nicely, especially the goalkeeper position. Midfield is gelling nicely with plenty of options. Up front is not fully coordinated. Generally promising.
Daily Record
a day ago
- Sport
- Daily Record
Kilmarnock gaffer confident Kelty Hearts loan spell can help young keeper shine
The 19-year-old has joined the League One outfit for the season Young goalkeeper Corey Armour has been tipped to force his way into the Kilmarnock reckoning if he can shine at Kelty. The young stopper has joined the League One club on loan for the campaign and featured in both of the Fife club's Premier Sports Cup games prior to being ineligible to face his parent club yesterday evening. Killie gaffer Stuart Kettlewell reckons the 19-year-old has all the attributes to make it a successful stint at New Central Park - and says he was made aware of Kelty's interest in the stopper on his very first day in the Rugby Park hotseat. Kettlewell said: 'Tam O'Ware at Kelty was desperate to get him in. He'd done his homework. He'd watched him from last season. He knew that he's a really talented young goalkeeper. 'I was at their game at the weekend, and I spoke to Corey on Monday. He knows that he can do an awful lot better with the goal he conceded (against East Fife), but sitting next to their directors and their officials, they're over the moon with him. 'I was really positive with him, done a bit of pre-season, he had a bit of game time for us but that plan with Fraser Stewart, our goalkeeping coach, was that we get him out and expose him to more senior football. 'There was no point in him sitting here being a no.2 or a no.3 not getting an opportunity at his age - he needs to get out and play.' He added: 'Kelty made their intentions clear. What's really important sometimes is that somebody comes and asks you for a player. I think sometimes what you see is, 'we're just looking for players, we're just looking for anybody'. 'I think they have been really specific in who they want and have been really determined - from the first day I walked in, Fraser had mentioned that there had been contact and real interest there. 'That shows me their intentions and what they want to try and do with Corey this season. 'But I think rest assured, I've seen enough from Corey that if he continues to make the improvements that he has done over the last year or so, then I think he's one that really starts to come into the equation for us here as one of our own. I think he can push on if he continues that progression.'
The Herald Scotland
a day ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Talk on Gaza is cheap. Why not take some proper action?
There may be a grain of truth in the Israeli foreign minister's retort that yesterday's joint statement is "disconnected from reality". There is something unreal about declaring opposition (or worse, expressing concern for Israel's reputation) and threatening further action while again doing nothing. There will be something equally unreal and disconnected in its maintaining it took every possible action to prevent it should all Gaza's people shortly be concentrated in the "humanitarian city" being built on the ruins of Rafah, to ready their displacement. Martin Johnstone, Lochwinnoch. Read more letters Drop-off charges are a disgrace Mike Dooley (Letters, July 19) is right to question the puerile excuses of the chief executive of Airport UK for dropping-off charges. However I can confirm that my taxi to the airport does suffer a dropping-off fee. Nevertheless that taxi produces the same fumes and occupies the same road space as a family car would, so the dropping-off charge does not help any environmental or traffic relief as claimed in those excuses. Outwith airports there are friends, family, or taxi drivers waiting in lay-bys or side streets to limit picking-up charges of pounds for minutes. Does this also help to reduce pollution or traffic flow? After the Glasgow Airport ram raid in 2007 all airports had to install expensive barriers and traffic control systems. Parking and drop-off charges were needed to cover these costs. That money has been recovered long ago so why are the charges for parking maintained at a higher level and why is a dropping-off charge needed at all? How do most European airports manage to balance their books without dropping-off fees? It is interesting that our hospitality industry questions possible tourist tax levies when airport charges must have a similar effect, albeit built into a different part of travel and stay costs home or away. We are perhaps fortunate that hospital parking is not priced in a similar manner. JB Drummond, Kilmarnock. Grease: a lost opportunity Brian Ferguson anticipates change at Pitlochry Festival Theatre ("Will Alan Cumming help Pitlochry become Scotland's next culture capital?", The Herald, July 22). Unfortunately a great opportunity has been missed this season. Last Saturday my wife and I were in the audience at the theatre for a performance of Grease. Musically, the show was excellent, with a cast of superb musicians and singers. (Take an extra bow, the girl on the bass guitar.) However, our enjoyment of the production was much diminished as the diction of the spoken passages was virtually unintelligible, due largely to the use of stupid American accents. Grease is, of course, originally set in late-fifties USA. But what an opportunity was missed to transpose the show to 1959 Scotland and present it in a Scottish idiom with local dialect and accents. Perhaps a little imagination by an artistic director will reap dividends. By the time we return, later in the summer, for The Great Gatsby, I hope some change may have been effected. Eric Begbie, Stirling. Foreign Secretary David Lammy (Image: Maja Smiejkowska/PA Wire) Ze answer I fully agree with your correspondents who dislike the use of "they/them" as being ungrammatical and confusing (Letters, July 18, 19, 21 & 22). May I point out that there already exists a gender-neutral pronoun in English? Though little used, it would be ideal for those not wishing to employ he or she. The word is "ze", pronounced "zee". It should, I think, be more widely used, and should be widely publicised. Do other correspondents agree? H Shearer, Cumbernauld. Grammar and the control freak I have been enjoying the recent correspondence about the poor use of grammar. Of course, football players, commentators and managers seem to take this to extremes. I'm sure many of the common mistakes they make are familiar to most of us: "The boy done good"; "The ball clearly has went over the line"; "He literally killed him with that tackle". Is it fair though that we expect those involved in the beautiful game to speak as eloquently as Cicero? Can we not offer congratulations when they have obviously been swotting up on the beautiful language? Listening to the radio as I drove home on the last day of the previous football season, I heard an interview with an under-pressure football manager prior to a very important game. I must applaud him for his wonderful use of the rhetorical device polyptoton: a figure of speech in which the same word is used in different forms in the same sentence. The example used by the beleaguered yet eloquent manager? "We can only control what we can control so we're going to be controlling the controllables." I'm not sure if his team won or if the match was lost due to his players' uncontrollability, but his copy of The Dark Arts of Rhetoric was obviously money well spended. Gordon Fisher, Stewarton. • While working in an inner city school in the late 1950, I heard 'I seen", "I done", 'I have went" and 'my pencil's broke" so often that I became converted and I began to believe that they were correct. Isobel McEwan, Skelmorlie.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Kettlewell demands Killie to be more 'threatening' in final third
Kilmarnock must be more "threatening" in front of goal against East Fife if they are to progress in the Premier Sports Cup insists Stuart Kettlewell. Killie recorded their third clean sheet of the group stage in their goalless draw with Kelty Hearts, but are now just one point ahead of both the Fifers and Livingston in Group H before Saturday's deciding games. Kettlewell's side will progress if they win at home against the League 1 outfit, but he knows they will need to improve their attacking play against Dick Campbell's side. "We have to be more threatening and we have to be able to go and express ourselves a wee bit more with some more composure to make sure we capitalise on opportunities," he told Killie TV. "If we think it's going to be any different – people not throwing their body on the line and defending their penalty box like Kelty Hearts did – then we are seriously mistaken. "It will be a difficult enough game for us and we will have to play with some real tempo to be able play through them and carve out opportunities. "What we will do between now and then is understand why we didn't execute it better and why we didn't finish. "Sometimes that's the last thing to come in pre-season so I don't become ultra negative, but the demands are there that we become more threatening in front of goal."
