Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
NO BUDDIES ACT
Brendan is standard bearer for coaches from my country, but I’m going out to beat champs not to collect autographs
ORAN KEARNEY could have been busy preparing Coleraine for their trip to face Ards at the Bangor Fuels Arena this weekend.
Instead he’s steeling himself for a managerial baptism of fire as St Mirren host Celtic tonight.
But the Irishman, who replaced Alan Stubbs earlier this week, is far from overawed and insists he couldn’t have hand-picked a better start to his Buddies career.
Kearney is also adamant he won’t be a star-struck autograph hunter as he tries to outwit countryman Brendan Rodgers.
The new Saints boss said: “It’s a surreal scenario. To be preparing for a game against Celtic, when it should have been
Ards on Saturday, is crazy.
“At times I’m still pinching myself. I won’t lie, when the team comes out and the stadium is bouncing, it will be a helluva buzz. It feels almost poetic that it’s Celtic in the first game.
“Being at home against the league champions is the perfect way to start. It’s the game I wanted to start off with. There is so much motivation.
“It’s the Friday night lights, live on TV – if players aren’t up for that and ready for it, then I don’t know.
“It’s a great start. As a player and manager, you aspire to reach the top. I’m looking forward to locking horns with Brendan – professionally and from an ambition point of view. He and Michael O’neill are the standard bearers for coaches from my country.
“Both of those guys have been exceptional in what they have achieved in a short period of time.
“I had a good conversation with Brendan and also Neil Lennon before my first interview in the summer.
“When I was flying here on Saturday morning I got a nice text from Brendan welcoming me across and saying he was looking forward to tonight. Did I ever think anything like this would happened to me?
“It’s hard to say. But now that it’s real, I’m not going to be standing ogling Brendan and looking for autographs.
“I will have an immense amount of pride to stand on the touchline and manage my team for what I hope is the first of many times.”
The 40-year-old former PE teacher doesn’t subscribe to the theory that anything he gets from this match is a bonus.
Despite taking just three points from the first four Premiership matches of the campaign, Kearney revealed he is sending out a St Mirren side with the aim of hurting the champions as there is no such thing as a free hit. And he said: “Celtic are a dangerous side. We are well aware of what they can do.
“It’s important we’re organised. We can look at
Celtic but we also have to concern ourselves about what we can do.
“We have to look at how we can hurt them.
It could be dangerous to go in with the mindset that anything we get out of this game is a bonus because it might plant seeds in the minds of the players that you will get beaten.
“Even in our analysis on Thursday morning we looked at two or three minutes of what is good about Celtic and five or six minutes about what we can hopefully do.
“All the players here know what Celtic are like.
“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel in terms of showing them everything. It’s important that we concentrate on ourselves.”