FOR THE first time in nine years, the sign on the door to Gardner Speirs’s office says ‘manager’. The semantics aren’t exactly bang on, but ‘interim manager’ probably wouldn’t fit on the door, and he’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
That remains the title Speirs works under at Victoria Park, Dingwall. It’s just that this particular interim is substantial, concerning as it does the time until Ross County’s financial foundations recover from years of overspending. "The decisions I have made have been for the long term. As regards players leaving and coming, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to make those decisions if I wasn’t going to be here," says Speirs, who picked up another title, manager of the month, this week.
The rehabilitation of the club remains top of the agenda. "Three months ago the club was going into administration," says Speirs. "That threat is not there any more but we are not out of the woods yet." As Speirs continues to take County forward in the face of budget cuts and player sales, the club’s rehabilitation has become his own.
His managerial record is a series of sudden opportunities. He got his break as a coach at Clyde under Alex Smith, his old boss at St Mirren. When Smith left, he was appointed manager, a job he held for two years. He was youth coach at Aberdeen when Tommy Moller Nielsen, assistant to Ebbe Skovdahl, left Pittodrie 11 months into the Dane’s charge, and Speirs was again promoted from within. In Dingwall, he was youth coach under first Smith then John Robertson. When Robertson left after a disagreement over his budget, Speirs stepped up again. For County, an experienced coach that fits the finances. For Speirs a shot at management again.
"It was always an ambition to get back, but I know how difficult that is. There are so few jobs and so many people available," he says. "You try to keep your standards high, as if it was the most important thing in the world that you are doing. I did that when it was the under-19s and I’m doing that now. There’s a difference between doing something for a long time and being experienced. If you do the same things you were doing then, without being sure that they are still relevant, without adapting, then that wouldn’t be right."
Advertisement
Robertson and Speirs have kept the team competitive despite losing key players including Jamie McCunnie to Dunfermline, Steven McGarry to Motherwell and Martin Canning to Gretna. County’s recovery off the pitch is perhaps best illustrated by their rebuttal of bids for John Rankin, their top scorer and the First Division’s player of the month for January. "Everyone wants to have better players," says Speirs. "What I have is belief in the ones that are here."
Tuesday brings the next opportunity to prove their Premierleague credentials. Falkirk travel north for a Scottish Cup replay, to contest a place against Hibs in the quarter-finals. It is a competition that holds mixed memories for Speirs. He was a member of the St Mirren squad that defeated Dundee United to lift the trophy in 1987, but did not play in the final. As manager of Clyde he was the victim of a major upset when Highland League Fraserburgh bounced the Second Division team out in 1997/98, and he was denied his own shock when a disputed penalty gave Kilmarnock, the eventual winners, a 1-0 win in round four of the previous season’s competition.
Jim Lauchlan and Gary McSwegan are the last of the big spends in Speirs’s squad. The future is in the youth system he oversaw and it has produced current first-teamers like Kevin McKinlay and Neil MacDonald. The future, for this peculiar interim at least, is with the quiet man with the second chance.