Academy boss gives players a dressing doqwn
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DAVIE Kirkwood blasted his players for complacency after he described Wick Academy’s 4-3 defeat to Turriff United as his side’s worst performance of the season.
Despite goal machine Davie Allan scoring twice in the first three minutes, the manager said his team was all over the place and never really looked in the match, even though it was in the lead after an hour.
He reprimanded his players in the dressing room saying they thought they just had to turn up and win after going on a run of eight wins after 12 games.
"We’ve had a settled side over the last few weeks where it looked like we had struck a right balance throughout the team," he said. "But on Saturday we were just all over the place with certain players maybe thinking that because we’ve played the same 11 over the last few weeks, their place was automatic.
"I made a point in the dressing room that the performance was well below our usual standards, but take nothing away from Turriff who thoroughly deserved their win."
The manager plans to freshen things up for his side’s visit to Formartine United on Saturday and is contemplating making as many as 10 changes to the starting line-up.
He said the squad needed to understand nobody should be taking their place for granted and there is competition at the club for all positions.
"There is only one person who is guaranteed a starting place in the line-up against Formartine United on Saturday, but I won’t name who that is until later on in the week. The squad knows who that person is as he never misses training, puts in 100 per cent every time and is a good whole-hearted player.
"What I hope this will do is give them a wake-up call and show that nobody’s position is safe. Sometimes we are going to have rough weeks, but the performance against Turriff United was completely unacceptable.
"You can get away with one or two players having an off day, but when 10 players are failing to make the grade, a message needs to be sent."
Turriff United co-manager James Duthie said he got the response he was looking for after his side’s 5-1 thrashing at Fraserburgh the week before.
He said despite having six regular first-team players injured, those called in stood up to the plate.
"On the back of last week’s terrible performance, it was important we got something," he said. "At the start it didn’t look great, but their desire to get back into the game was tremendous. Over the 90 minutes we were the better side, we worked so hard to squeeze them, press them.
"They’re a very good side technically but we didn’t let them play. Regarding the penalty incident, both dugouts agreed it was a penalty, it got us back into the game. These are all young boys, they played with no fear and we could have had more goals."
