Plunge to non-league ranks a sign of ambition for veteran Erskine
MOVING from the Premiership to the fifth tier of Scottish football isn’t the path many players set out to follow, but Chris Erskine has never gone about things in a conventional manner.
At the age of 22, he was still turning out for Kilbirnie Ladeside before being brought into the professional ranks by Partick Thistle and, on the pitch, the playmaker has earned a reputation for his creativity and lateral thinking in the final third.
It’s perhaps fitting, then, that Erskine’s latest move has been another unorthodox one. After spending the last 18 months at Livingston in the top flight, the 33-year-old has decided to swap the Premiership for life in the Lowland League with his local team, East Kilbride.
The financial implications of the coronavirus pandemic played its part in the move, he admits, but there remains a sense of fiery ambition within Erskine – one that he hopes will result in promotion to League Two come the end of the season.
“It was a quiet summer in terms of hearing from clubs because teams didn’t know their budgets and then East Kilbride got in contact with me pretty quickly,” he said. “I went and spoke to the manager and liked what he had to say.
“I’m from East Kilbride so I’ve been keeping an eye on the team over the last few years and I’ve got a lot of friends who’ve played for them.
“I’ve always thought they would get up and into the leagues eventually but it’s not quite happened for them yet. But after speaking to the manager and hearing what he had to say – just how ambitious the club are, where they want to take it and you can see with the other guys they’ve signed as well that we really want to go for it this year.
Erskine continued: “The goal for me is to get the team up. That’s the ambition of the club anyway and that’s why they’re signing guys like me and Pates [Paul Paton] and the others. That’s their ambition and it’s mine as well.
“Being from East Kilbride – I’ve lived here my whole life – it would be good for our town to have a professional team in the senior league set-up. That’s my goals and I wanted to go somewhere where I could still achieve something.
“I wasn’t just going somewhere to pick up some money and play out the rest of my career. If I could help get East Kilbride into the senior leagues, that would be something else that I would be proud of when I look back at my career.”
Erskine is not the only player to have taken the decision to sign up for part-time football, with a host of players joining clubs in the Highland and Lowland leagues for the upcoming campaign. Paton, Darian MacKinnon, Ian McShane, Gregg Wylde and Kallum Higginbotham have all taken the step down in somewhat surprising circumstances but Erskine says the reality is simple: these are the only clubs offering contracts at the moment, and players require the stability of a regular income.
“That’s the way it is just now,” Erskine said, when asked if the offer of a concrete wage was an important factor in his move.
“There are so many players in the same position just now, out of contract and not getting wages over the summer. Boys have got bills to pay. I think in football, if someone offers you a contract that’s right for you sometimes you just need to go for it and I think that’s what we’ve seen over the last few months.”