Three months short of his 33rd birthday, Kris Boyd never imagined he would be involved in a battle like this in the twilight of his career. Kilmarnock are fighting for their Ladbrokes Premiership lives and, unlikely as it looked for much of this football season, the veteran striker has emerged once more as the gnarled goalscorer riding to the rescue.
In his mysterious career, Boyd has regularly made nets bulge, whatever his other limitations. “He can’t really run; it’s strange,” Walter Smith once observed of him, despite Boyd regularly finishing as top scorer at Rangers. He has taken flak from everywhere, yet history will record him as the old Scottish Premier League’s most prolific poacher, even in the era of Henrik Larsson, John Hartson and others.
“To maintain the club’s status in the league is a big thing for me. It’s not just the club that would struggle otherwiseKris Boyd
Boyd’s goals are more meaningful than ever now as Kilmarnock take on Partick Thistle this afternoon in the second of a four-game “must win” series to try to avoid the play-offs. Boyd, the boyhood Rangers fan, knows more than most what it means to the Ayrshire town, being a local lad, having come through the ranks at Rugby Park, and now being on his third tour as a Kilmarnock player.
“Yes, I grew up a Rangers fan, but I lived just ten minutes from Kilmarnock, and have always felt an affinity with this club,” he says. “Many of my dad’s mates were Killie fans, and I was at the 1997 Scottish Cup final [aged 13] when Killie won. I’ve been around this club since I was 13 or 14 years old; that’s nearly 20 years of my life that I have been associated with Kilmarnock. I know the club inside out.
“To maintain the club’s status in the league is a big thing for me. It’s not just the club that would struggle otherwise. The whole town here would suffer if Killie went down. And Kilmarnock as a town has suffered more than most in recent years.”
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The change in Kilmarnock’s fortunes since Lee Clark arrived has been dramatic. There were doubters when the 43-year-old Englishman arrived, because of his patchy track-record in management, but Clark’s passion and intensity towards improving his team have been obvious to everyone. In lauding Clark, Boyd does appear to be a little less than complimentary towards Gary Locke, his predecessor.
“Since Lee Clark came in it has all been about, ‘how can we improve ourselves; how can we make ourselves better?’ ” says Boyd. “Over the last couple of months, I think we’ve done that. The results might not always have shown it but anyone who has watched us over the course of the season can clearly see there has been a big improvement.
“For Lee Clark, a spade is a spade; there are no grey areas. We also now have an intensity in terms of getting about the pitch, and that’s because our training is now of the same intensity as the games. I think it took Lee a couple of months to get us up to the level of fitness that he wanted. There has been a dramatic improvement in our fitness, and it means we can get about the pitch and stop people from playing. I think that was obvious at Hamilton last week. Now we’ve got legs in the team and we’ve been able to get at opponents higher up the pitch.”
The arrival of Clark has also, finally, given Boyd a new lease of life. For whatever reason, Locke signed Boyd last summer but played him sparingly. Even Clark himself doubted Boyd’s appetite and fitness at first. But three goals in four starts has suddenly made Boyd the player around whom Clark wants to build this Killie attempted escape.
“It has not been easy this season for me,” said Boyd. “I was in for a game, out for a game, back in for two, out for two. Even when the new manager first came in I thought, ‘maybe he doesn’t fancy me either.’ But over the past three or four weeks I’ve trained really hard — and trained hard away from the club as well — and I’ve got that buzz again.
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“To be honest I couldn’t complain at not being in the team; I knew I hadn’t been performing the best in training or in games. But since the new manager came in there has been a dramatic upturn in my fortunes. Now I feel I can play for 90 minutes, and can get myself about the pitch. I’m not going to sit here and say that I’m the fittest player in the world, but I know that, if I get to a level of fitness, I can score goals at this level. I’ve proved that over the years.
“This is as easy as I’ve felt playing football, because of the youngsters we’ve got around me in the team. We’ve got energy in players like Rory McKenzie, Greg Kiltie, Josh Magennis and others. If I can get myself in the right areas I know I’ll get goals. I know I can still be an asset to Killie.”
Even going on 33, playing is still what Boyd wants to do. He has been coaching Kilmarnock’s under-17s and under-20s for the past six months but he refuses to let the ageing process be an excuse for some winding down of his career. “I’m doing my pro-licence badges just now; I want to have them for later in life. But I’ve still wanted to be playing. I’m the first to admit that, when I’m not in the team, I do struggle to keep a smile on my face. I just want to play football.
“As you get older as a player, everything changes. You go from that wee guy that was running about the streets doing whatever you want, to being a father, having kids to look after. As a young footballer, you go out and play with a lot of freedom, and create chances, and play with a smile on your face. But then you get older, you start thinking about other things, and your outlook on life changes. Getting older as a footballer is just like getting older in your life: things change.
“But you can still get to a level where you are happy, and you are enjoying yourself on the pitch and scoring goals. When that happens, you start to play with a freedom, and you can get back to being that young kid again. It’s about being happy with yourself.”
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The bottom of the Premiership table is like Russian roulette. If Killie beat Thistle today at Rugby Park their ambition to reach tenth place and avoid the play-offs could be on. The prospect whets Boyd’s appetite. “I’ve said to myself, if we are going to go down, then I am going to go down fighting.
“We faced four ‘cup finals’ and we won our first at Hamilton. Now we have a great opportunity to pull Partick Thistle into the mire as well. We now feel we are in control. It is still in our hands and we’ve got this great opportunity. We need to go and win against Thistle and keep it going. It would mean a hell of a lot to me to see Killie stay up.”