Kirkwood: 'We're targeting everybody'
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NOVEMBER 5 certainly won’t be a day Wick Academy manager Davie Kirkwood will forget any time soon after his side beat title contenders Nairn County 5-3.
The match, however, didn’t start off as a memorable one, as the manager explained.
“For the first 20-odd minutes I was thinking, ‘is there a game on out there?’ And that was both teams – it was just really flat,” he told the Courier.
“It seemed to take giving a goal away to spur us on and I don’t like seeing that because if you come up against the right team you are clawing it back.”
However, after the game exploded into action 23 minutes in when Nairn’s Steven Mackay scored the first goal, it was non-stop.
The Scorries boss said the second half, in particular, was “just a joy to watch”.
“If some of the goals had come off and you had been watching it on TV you would have been talking about it for years,” he said. “Anybody here watching the second half must have had a big smile on their face – I know I certainly did.
“It was honestly a joy to watch.”
Kirkwood could be seen spurring his team on from the sidelines, and keenly shouting for his players to stay in formation.
This appeared to work, with the tight-knit team claiming all three points.
“All we do is believe in ourselves,” said the manager. “I’m focusing on what we do and just making the odd tweak during the game.”
Despite results not going Academy’s way in the past few weeks, Kirkwood was keen to point out the victory over Nairn is yet another big scalp claimed this season.
“We beat Formartine last week, we’ve beaten Buckie and we’ve beaten Nairn now,” he said.
“We’re not targeting any teams in particular – we’re targeting everybody.”
The difference between the first and second half was audible in the Nairn technical area.
County manager Les Fridge was noticeably silent during the latter period of the second half – in stark contrast to his animated and vocal performance at the start of the game.
Afterwards, he pulled no punches and told the Courier he was very disappointed in his team’s display.
“That’s probably the poorest we’ve defended in the last two seasons,” he said. “We made a lot of silly mistakes and it cost us – not to take away anything from Wick as they knocked the ball about. It’s been a while since we lost five goals and it’s very disappointing.”
Fridge said going in 2-2 at half-time he thought there was still hope for an away victory but, after giving away a penalty and an own goal, he knew the nails were in the coffin.
“We were chasing the game after that,” he said. “Hard work is the only thing that is going to rectify that for the next game.”
