Johnstone Burgh manager Jamie McKim spoke to www.johnstoneburghfc.com to discuss his time at the club so far, injury updates and more.

You've just celebrated your 6 year anniversary at the club by signing a new contract, was it an easy decision to stay on?
It was an incredibly easy decision to make. Obviously, I’ve been here for a long time, I've been through a lot at the club in terms of there’s been a lot of difficult moments, there’s been times where we’ve seen progress and now, we’re starting to see progress happen quicker. It’s an exciting time at the club and there’s a lot of positive things happening, and we’ve got good people round about us now so it was never a decision I really had to make, it was just a formality really.

What's been your highlight since you joined the club?
I think there’s been a lot of highlights. I think the season that Covid finished the season early, we’d won 13 out of 14 games. Obviously, that was one of the biggest frustrations, but it was also a highlight in terms of the consistency and the strength of the squad that we’d built that season.
On top of that, probably the promotion into the league that we’re in at the moment from the conferences that they’d put together into the championship. The last day, we beat Muirkirk to get promoted. We had to win that day, and if we won by five goals, we’d get promoted in third, rather than fourth, and we won 6-1. That was incredible.
To be honest, those two took some beating, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that Saturday beating St Cadocs and progressing to the semis of the Scottish Junior Cup with the squad we had available. In the circumstances, that is also one of the main highlights I’ve got to admit because I think the atmosphere round about Saturday, the fact that we’ve done it in that manner, we’ve gone 2-0 down, we’ve come back and went ahead, we’ve then been pegged back and the quality of the penalties, and with the strength of the squad, and the players we were missing, I thought it was incredible and it said a lot about the boys, so that was a major highlight as well.

There's been a lot of changes, both on and off the pitch, during your time here. How's it been for you, seeing the club evolve and progress over the years?
It’s obviously been difficult, it’s been very very enjoyable but a difficult time over the six years. The most important change to me, and for me, staying in the position that I’m in, is the changes off the pitch because the likes of Jack (Henderson) coming in in the summer, helping us to push on, enabling us to take the club to different levels, employ different things and professionalise the environment, allowing myself and my team to do more with the club. Also Scott Graham coming in. Scott’s been a massive support to me day to day, we have a great relationship and we’re working together closely on a daily basis, and he's been one of the main sources of support for me. Then the committee at the moment, the amount of people that are on it that are supportive and do their bit. If it wasn't for that off-the-field structure, I don’t think much could’ve changed on the pitch. I think we had progressed to an extent where we had taken the club without any sort of finance, without any investment, without any real background support, other than two or three certain individuals like Brian (Williams) and others, we’d taken it, probably, to a really good place but needed that next step, and Scott and Jack have helped with that and obviously the guys round about me, in terms of the backroom staff, have done a great job with that as well, so it’s been difficult but very very enjoyable and I just hope that we can keep that going.

We made a couple of big-name signings in the summer which saw the club featured on Sky Sports News and other national news outlets. As well as bringing the club more fans, there's also more people who want to see us fail. Does that bring extra pressure, knowing that there's a lot more people watching what's going on at the club? And if so, how do you deal with that pressure?
I think, and I’ve said this a few times, it’s certainly brought a lot more attention and a lot more people to the games, 100 percent. To be honest, the pressure doesn’t come externally and with people wanting to see us fail, I think that’s just natural in terms of where we live, we live in the West of Scotland, that’s the mentality of people at times and I get that, I don’t have an issue with that.
The pressure, for me, comes from within the group. The pressure for the group comes from within the group. We have a healthy internal expectation in the group, amongst the club and that’s what we thrive on.
It’s something I don’t think you need to learn how to handle. For me anyway, I find with a lot of the guys, you’re either built for it or you’re not and the good thing is, the group that we’ve built, most, if not all, of them are built for it and they’re up for the challenge and they want to be successful. I think, to be honest, you want to put the pressure on yourself to perform, to be at your best, and we do that really really well. One of the most difficult things this year is with that pressure you put on yourself, is trying not to get too high when you win and not get too low when you lose, and trying to remain balanced but football’s an emotional game and that’s a really really difficult thing to do.

There's obviously a lot of talent in this squad, how do you keep everyone happy when only 11 players can start?
It’s difficult to do that, but I think the way we manage is the guys that are on form play. I think there’s been situations this season where players have been fortunate to keep their place due to injuries, due to others, but I think you just treat everybody with respect. You pick the teams that you think are best to win the game, the teams that have earned the right to play and I think as long as you treat everybody with respect and have a positive relationship, there’s no reason for people to be unhappy. We only facilitate it and when the players perform, they put themselves into the team and when they don’t perform, they bring themselves out. We just make those decisions based on what we see.

We're missing some key players with injuries at the moment, including club captain Del Esplin. Are you able to give us an update on these injuries?
There’s quite a few:
Kyle Lafferty is back training, he’s just building himself back up and we’re hoping to have him back very very soon, obviously he’ll be huge for us.
Del Esplin is having surgery on his groin injury tomorrow (15^th Feb). That should see him miss between 6-9 weeks before he’s back playing, just depending on his recovery.
We’re expecting Dom Boland and Ryan Wallace back in the next 3-4 weeks.
We still have Kieran Brady out as well, who looks a bit more long term. We’ve not managed to get to the bottom of that yet and he’s no closer to coming back at the moment, but hopefully in time we’ll be back to a full quota.
It's just trying to get us to that point where we’re at full strength for the run-in, and that’s my target to give us the best chance of success.

With the number and quality of players we've signed, it's great to see we've not abandoned our Development Team, seeing several of our U20s called up to the first team this season. How important is it that we continue to use the Development Team?
The Development Team’s been hugely important to me since I’ve been here and we set it up. It’s something that, when the Development League first came about, I made it clear to the club it’s something I thought we really had to rely on and try and make use of. And that’s not changed just because of the level of player that we bring in. I think what is really important, in terms of the Development Team, that we keep pushing to improve the level and improve the standard so that we can keep bringing guys in like young Andrew Paton, a goalkeeper, who’s in training with us every session. Kenzie McCrystal’s now in with us every session. We’ve had a couple of players – Brodie O’Neill’s been in, Aidan Busby’s been in, Logan Thomson’s been in, and I think it’s important that you’ve got young players getting an opportunity but the most important thing is that they’re good enough for it, so we need to keep striving in that area. If the young boys are good enough, they’ll get the opportunity. I think it’ll come out in the next few days or so that Noah Young’s extended his contract, he’s out on loan at the moment at Glenvale but he will get the opportunity to come in with the first team in the summer, and again that’s somebody we’ve grown through the Development Team, we’ve developed, and somebody who’ll come out the other end and be a first team player for us and I think that’s got to be the way we look at to make the club sustainable in the future so it’s really positive.